The Heiderich Theory
by Beckett Simpleton
Summary: Reunited in Shamballa but during WWII, Ed and Al are forced to separate, Al evacuating to England for safety while Ed is forced to fight in the German army, they keep in contact through letters. Al's experience through the Blitz while Edward lies soggy in a trench. This can only end in tears, just like last time. Sequel to (and spoilers for) Charismatic. Contains Heiderich too.
1. Half and Half

**So, since Charismatic was such a hit, I've decided on writing a sequel. And you all have to thank SilentRainDrops for the ending. **

**If you're just jumping in here, you should probably read Charismatic first, as this is a direct continuation. (If you were looking forward to actually reading this, don't worry, it's the same kind of style. Because I sometimes get pissed off when asked to read something else first when I just want to read the fic I clicked on.) I mean, you could probably just force your way through the first chapter and take it as it comes, if you really don't want to read the prequel.**

**Chapter One: Half and Half**

Edward only spent six more months alone in Germany, where he celebrated his 18th birthday as he would any other day. He continued to tie up Alfons' loose ends at the rocketry workshop, and left when there was nothing more to be done there. He didn't want to devote the rest of this time into helping the Nazis in this horrible mission they were carrying out, when he was finished making sure that Alfons was not known for a person who never finished his work, he set off on his own mission to find Alphonse Elric, or at least figure out the relationship between their universes.

It involved a lot of geometric drawings which were very complicated and cluttered with cramped illegible handwriting, all determinedly titled 'Heiderich Theory' before there relevance to finding out where this world was in correlation to his own.

He had to quickly stop drawing the worlds as two spheres sitting side by side. They were not two similar planets, they were two parallel universes.

It was a hard theory to wrap his head around, like trying to imagine Heaven as in the sky, and yet beyond the reach of a rocket. He spent many long hours with his head in his hands and his teeth clenched in frustration, alone in his flat with no one to pat his shoulder and tell him that it'd work out, even though they had no idea how monumental the problem was.

God, he missed Alfons.

Both of them.

He was so alone.

There was always that positive thought in the back of his mind though. Egging him on.

Alphonse is here somewhere, it hissed to him, when he was an inch from giving up.

_But he could also be dead_ Edward grumpily answered his subconscious.

Are you really going to believe that? It replied.

_No. What am I thinking!? No!_

Alphonse was here somewhere, and so he started on another theory. If Alphonse and Alfons had some kind of bond, and the Amestris and Germany were similar in geography to each other, then there was a good chance that if Alphonse had made it over _(which he had_) then he was probably in Munich somewhere, so he did all he could to just scour the area, and read the papers to try to find him. He was very tempted to put up posters, but it was not a good idea to draw attention to one person in the times that they were in right now.

And then one Sunday morning, at the usual of six in the morning when Edward got up to buy the paper as he did every day, even before he woke himself up with a cup of tea (coffee was too expensive now). That was the day.

He carried his paper back home and sat at the table, his stomach empty once again, since the food was getting so expensive and he was sick of eating food that ranged from white to pale yellow in colour.

He flicked through the first few pages, which were mildly interesting, but not what he was looking for. He stopped as he got to the new instalment to the newspaper. It was a missing person page. People didn't know what had happened to their relatives. Most of them were probably German Jews who had been murdered, but there was still a chance, and these people, like Edward, checked the newspaper, every day, just in case.

Edward skimmed through the pages, knowing that he'd be reading it over in more depth later anyway, but some words that were not German caught his eye.

It was like the smell of home to a lost child. Edward actually gasped out loud, for between all of the lists and lists of names there was one word in Amestrian.

'Brother.'

Edward fell over himself to stand up.

Alphonse was in Munich. He had been right, damnit, he'd been right, his theory had been correct. He pulled on his trademark red coat which he had managed to salvage from the destruction of all of their possessions, untangling it from Alfons' vertically striped scarf, which he happened to know was from his grandparents and stumbled out of the door in a mad rush. He ran down the road to the shop that he's just moments ago bought 'Das Reich' from and fell through the doorway.

The shopkeeper looked up from the same paper in alarm.

"Good morning," Edward panted, trying to smarten himself up. "Can you tell me where I can find out who put this message in _Das Reich_ please?"

"Ahh…" the shopkeeper said, thinking for a moment. "The printers is just over two miles away. You can get there in an hour or so if you hurry. I don't suppose you have a car, young man?"

Edward shook his head.

"You're lucky. There aren't many people who find someone in that paper. Are you sure it's who you're looking for?" he asked, knowing exactly why Edward would be trying to find the office for the newspaper. The boy came in every morning, at the same time, bless him, and bought the same paper. He could only be looking for someone.

"It could be no one else." Edward replied.

The shopkeeper graced him with a rare smile. "Good luck to you. Something has to come out of this Godforsaken war. I'm glad you got your bit. Head about a mile – a mile and a half Northward and ask for directions there."

Edward gave a nod of thanks and stepped from the shop's doorway, immediately setting off at a brisk walk Northwards.

Edward was quite used to walking long distances when he'd been living in Amestris, and though in all his time in Germany he'd walked little, he still reached his destination within the hour.

He found the building in which the newspaper was printed, and above that was the editors. He wasn't entirely sure how newspapers worked, but he assumed that if you wanted to get yourself in one, a letter would be sent here. And if Al had just ended up in Germany, he doubted he spoke any German. Surely this would be an obvious building, saying as there were newspaper stands stacked outside and missing person posters plastered all over the face of the building.

Edward heaved open the heavy wooden doors and strolled up the wide hallway towards the reception desk.

"Looking for someone?" the tied woman immediately asked. She'd had to deal with this all day, and it wasn't that she didn't care, it was just that it was getting to be a bit depressing to have to deal with people who had lost family and friends to this horrible war that she had such mixed feelings about.

"Yes. Did a young boy come in yesterday, about seventeen? He would have spoken very little German. Put a piece in the missing person's section in another language?" Edward asked, speaking very quickly.

"Yes, actually." Said the woman, sitting up a little straighter. "He gave me this, but I'm not quite sure what he wanted me to do with it."

She held up a scrap of paper with a scrawly drawing that wasn't really Armstrong quality, but was unmistakably Edward.

"Alphonse." Edward whispered, taking the paper from her hands. He shook himself out of his daydream.

"What do you know of where he is?" Edward asked desperately, leaning over the desk. The woman leant back slightly at the confrontation.

"Who is this person?" she asked, out of pure curiosity.

"My brother." He muttered, suddenly realising how much he _had_ to find Alphonse, now that he'd gotten somewhere. He couldn't go home without him now. Not now that he had a purpose.

Oh how it felt to have a purpose, a mission, like the old days again.

Quite suddenly, he didn't know how he'd coped these past years without it.

"Ah. Well," the secretary stood up and came out from behind her desk. "Though he had trouble talking to me, he did drag me outside and point in that direction," she said, leading Edward out into the bight March sunlight and pointing down a rickety street full of old-fashioned shops. "He kept pointing down there. Oh! Edward. He kept saying Edward, I think."

If Ed were that kind of man, he would have kissed her.

"Thank you, very much," he said, full of sincerity. "You have no idea. You have no idea how much this means to me," he told her.

He was going to see Alphonse. And they had been worlds apart for the past six months. It had been so long, since that initial spark, so much searching. At the immigration office and citizen records. Nothing. For months and months. Nothing.

"You have no idea how relieving it is to see someone find their lost family. You have no idea how many people have come in asking for posters and newspaper pieces to be put in, and then for them to be coming back for the next few months and months before finally they give up. It's nice to know that it works, in some cases."

Edward felt he needed to reply, but found that he had nothing to say that was in anyway relevant, and so he nodded his thanks and scurried off where he had been directed, so excited that he could barely breathe. He had the huge desire to shout out 'Al!' as loud as he possibly could, but forced himself to calm down and wonder how he was going to go about this.

The street was narrow, narrower than the ones in central Munich where he;d lived with Alfons. He hadn't moved far, really. Just on the other side of the park. He didn't want to be too far from Alfons' grave, since he usually turned up there almost every other day.

He looked around at the shop-fronts that surrounded him. Grocery shops, flower shops, all with little flat above them, just like Alfons'. He supposed his theory that the two Alphonses would stumble across similar lives and circumstances was true.

And so on this theory, Edward looked up at the windows above the flower shop. It was a place to start.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

Alphonse Elric finally dragged his eyes open at half seven in the morning, the sunlight streaming through the windows having forced him up. He finally understood his brother's reluctance to get up in the morning all those years ago, when he used to sit up all night waiting for the morning to come. Waiting at the bottom of the bed like some loyal dog not wanting to impose.

Bed was so good. Especially now, just as Spring was taking hold of the world and bringing a little warmth the Europe. It had been God-awful in the snowy winter. The windows of his old flat had had rain trickling down on the inside as well as the outside. It had been bloody cold. Cold, lonely, and for the most part, hungry, was how he'd spent the winter. But he couldn't complain. He knew that this world was at war, and that fighting was still happening right through the horrid winter. Alphonse had no right to feel sorry for himself, even though he hadn't yet developed an affinity with this world.

He felt as if he were wandering around in a dream.

Just as he'd taken off his pyjamas to change into his day clothes, someone knocked at the door. Alphonse cursed quietly, trying to find his underwear as fast as possible.

"I'm coming!" he called desperately, giving a little cheer when he found his clothes. He really needed to buy some more clothes. He was turning into his brother.

Even when he'd scrambled into all his clothes, his shirt buttoned up wrongly, he realised that he had no idea of the whereabouts of his keys.

"I'm sorry!" He yelled at the door, frantically searching the benches and draws. "I've lost my keys! Hold on! I'll be just a minute- Ha!" he cried, having found them in his coat pocket.

He hurriedly unlocked the door, looking thoroughly ruffled and mismatched. "I'm so sorry, I'm usually up-"

Alphonse didn't know what to do with himself. On the doorstep was his brother. His brother, whom he'd be searching for, for so many years, in Amestris. Who he'd finally traced to a _parallel world_ as had had a nightmare of a time trying to locate him in that world too.

Edward was right _there_. He didn't know whether to scream, or cry, or hug him or pass out.

In the end, it was something of all four, and he spluttered and babbled incoherent nonsense while he went white with shock.

"Big Brother."

God, it had been a long time since Edward had heard that language, and indeed, that voice.

Looking back, it was a pretty aggressive hug.

**Well, this is chapter one, which is a bit of a prologue, and the rest of the story will be in a slightly different style. Those who are reading this who got the PM will know that it'll be half narration, half letters. Things will move on extremely quickly from here on.**

**Also, I've never **_**really **_**written Alphonse before, so I might fall into the trap of giving him his own character, and not the one he already had but… This is very AU. I'll try to keep up his Alphonseness. **

**I've love to hear what you think of this; if the meeting was a little abrupt, it was because I just need to get it over with.**

**See you soon!**

**~BS**


	2. Exit Fee

**Here's chapter two. I'm trying to get things moving on quickly.**

**Chapter Two: Exit Fee**

Edward and Alphonse walked back to Edward's flat in central music in a kind of other worldly daze, as if they hadn't been apart longer than a week. Alphonse chatted away about everything that had happened in Amestris in Edward's absence and how Winry and Roy and his team were getting on while Edward listened (it was so good to hear and speak Amestrian again), only half intrigued. The other half of him wondered why things were so easy. Not that he had a problem with how things between them had just melted together in the few seconds since that bone-crushing hug, but it was just strange. Strange that there was no awkward silences where they wondered what to say to each other after all these years.

"Big Brother, you've gotten so tall!" Alphonse told him, that happy little voice. Edward could have kissed him. What he'd have given to have heard that voice - another arm or more, when he thought about it literally. Alphonse's voice was like… some kind of drug. If never wore off, he just wanted more and more the more of him he heard, but after his absence, he couldn't have gone without it much longer.

And then he realised what Alphonse had actually said and his face lit up like a child's on Christmas morning.

"Really!?" Edward exclaimed, almost pouncing on his younger brother in excitement. "Do you think so?" he pestered, measuring himself against Alphonse who nodded, grinning madly at his brother's antics and that he'd made him so happy.

"I think so, I definitely think so!"

When Edward finally got down from his high and sobered up he looked around him and remembered where he was. The illusion of Alphonse, dizzying happiness and bright sunlight had deluded him temporarily, but he was still in Germany, and there was still a war going on. Did Alphonse even know?

"How have you been getting on in Germany? You can't speak it, can you? How have you coped on your own?" Edward asked, quite admiring Alphonse for getting this far on his own.

Alphonse thought for a moment, pulling his mind back to that first moment in a parallel universe. It had been so cold.

"It was raining and cold and I couldn't understand anyone and there were soldiers all over and it was scary, but I knew that if I was correct about the alternate universe then I would come across you at some point." He replied vaguely. He supposed that greater detail could be explained at a later date. It wasn't important now. First off, his brother would want to know how he got through the gate he supposed.

"How far did you get with the theory?" Edward asked, intrigued. He knew that from his own research that if Alphonse had crossed the Gate then he must have worked out some part of the theory, but he had no idea how much.

Alphonse tapped his chin thoughtfully. The way he spoke about the method for crossing the gate was as if he'd figured it all out – which he probably had. After all, his brother was a genius.

"I figured out that if you had crossed the Gate then the Gate must go somewhere like another world, and then I wondered that maybe the gate just passed into another world, just like this one, with people, just like this one, and similar circumstances and such, so I thought that if I managed to cross over, then due to similar circumstances, I would meet you. And also, I'd have another me, and you'd have another you! How weird, huh? Was I right? Did you meet me? Other me, I mean?" Alphonse asked, getting side tracked slightly.

Edward nodded, surprising Alphonse with his sombre reply.

Alphonse stopped walking, looking at his brother's expression curiously.

"What is it, Brother?" He asked, suddenly concerned. What depth did his words have? What meaning…?

"Brother…?"

Edward sighed. He wasn't going to _not tell_ Alphonse anything, but he really didn't know how to explain the person that was Alfons Heiderich and do him justice. Finally, he found a half satisfactory explanation, and that was the best he could do.

"He wasn't another you." Edward said quietly, continuing to walk, but making a note to detour towards the park.

"What do you mean?" Asked Alphonse, not quite understanding why this was such a touchy subject and wishing he could just _know_.

"I- I don't know, Al, it's really hard to explain, but… Alfons was a good man, and he deserves no less than you do to be called half one someone else. He was his own person, and you are yours."

Alphonse caught the past tense and narrowed his eyes. "Was?"

"… Yes. He died."

And then Edward realised that he couldn't let Alphonse know that he'd killed a man. Al shouldn't have to know. After all, it wasn't his fault, but it would eat away at his soul. His little brother didn't need that kind of burden on his shoulders. It wasn't lying. It was just editing the story.

"He was shot by a soldier." Edward explained shortly.

Alphonse couldn't say that he didn't feel cheated. He wanted so badly to know the man that was… His alter – not his other half.

He hadn't known the man, so he couldn't say that he felt any loss, though clearly Edward did. Not to say that he didn't feel sad. He did - both for selfish and selfless reasons. It was an odd sort of circumstance.

He felt as if he'd had a sibling who'd died – but before he was born.

"Was he in the army?" Alphonse asked, not seeing how else he could be shot by a soldier and was stumped when Edward shook his head.

"Al, do you know what's going on in this country?" He asked. This was serious. If Alphonse didn't know… well he had to know. He couldn't understand how he'd survived this long in Nazi Germany without the knowledge.

"Ah… I don't know what you're talking about, Brother… I mean, I know there's _something_ but… I couldn't never read or speak to anyone, so I never really found out…"

Edward modified his route. He didn't have time to stop off at Alfons' grave, it seemed. He planned to take Alphonse home and explain the political situation.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

"So, Adolf Hitler wants to kill all of the Jews?" Alphonse asked, not really getting it. After all, the man must be mad. There was no way he could hope to kill off an entire race. It was impossible.

Well, no. It was nearly possible, was a better term. They'd seen that possibility for themselves. The Ishbalans and the Xeruxeans.

"Basically. But it's not just the Jews he's getting at. The man's mad, clearly, but that doesn't make him any less powerful. The Nazi army roam the streets and have the right to do anything from tripping you up to shooting you dead." Edward murmured. This hadn't exactly been what he'd wanted to end up talking about with his bother after all these years.

Alphonse was silent for a while, pondering the options here.

"I don't understand why you didn't just leave." He said, almost accusing. To him, it seemed stupid to be living in a country like this. Like in every war, there would be neutral countries, or at the least, less violent ones.

"Well, at first I was being dragged around with Hohenheim, but then he buggered off somewhere and I haven't heard from him since the last time he sent me money, which was about three months ago. He was probably shot in the head or some shit. I really don't care. But anyway, even when he left, he didn't leave me alone, I ended up with this bloke… This guy a couple of years older than me." Edward seemed to run out of steam and just stopped, wringing his hands. Alphonse just stared at him blanking.

"Who, Brother?"

Edward sighed. "I lived with your alter, Alfons Heiderich. Nice man. It's… It's a pity. It's a pity he died. You'd have liked him."

The silence was horribly awkward and Alphonse could only stare down at his hands and wonder why he suddenly wanted to cry. Now. After all, he knew that his alternate self had died, but now that he knew that little bit more about this person, that he and his brother had been close…

Alphonse was by no means a spiteful person, in fact, more often than not, he was worrying about the feelings of someone else than his own, and he had never thought of Edward as 'his' in a possessive way. Not before now.

If anything, he was Ed's, and he could only begin to imagine how Edward must have felt being to be being looked after by the alter of his younger brother, it could only have been awkward.

There he was, thinking about others again. But right now, he was somehow upset, and he didn't quite know why. He settled on thinking that he must have some kind of affinity with this Alfons person, though he hadn't felt much at the supposed time of his death, other than that time a few months ago where he'd randomly been winded in the middle of a dream and woke up terrified.

But that was just new-world-nerves or something.

"What was he like?" Alphonse found the words just fell from his mouth, and they made him feel better, in a weird kind of way. Like throwing up water.

Edward leaned over on the table, much like Alfons had done just before meeting him and laced his fingers through his hair.

"I don't know. Just a nice guy, I suppose. He was just the nicest guy. Like you, but older, and German."

Alphonse couldn't even bring himself to feel flattered.

"So anyway, I was living with Alfons after that, and I did bring up moving to another country, but… He wanted to stay in Germany."

"Why?"

"Because he was German, I suppose. But anyway, he… Well he was shot and… and then I found you…"

Edward was having a slight internal battle. Of course, he couldn't keep Alphonse in this country, it was dangerous and he could be killed, it just wasn't what brothers did, but another thing was that though Alphonse could leave the country because he was seventeen and therefore legally a child (and could be pitied by the Kindertransport), Edward was eighteen.

Besides his slightly untrue papers, he did not exist in this world, and neither did Alphonse, and so not only would it be hard to get Alphonse out of the country, since he didn't have a passport, but he would certainly not make it out of the border, even though he had a passport, because he had an obligation, as a healthy 'German' male of his age to help the war effort. Not the Nazi army, but the German army, which was fast being conquered and losing troops. The German army was waning, but the Nazi army was prevailing and for another thing, Germany didn't really know what it was fighting for anymore.

Edward didn't want to end up fighting for a country that he didn't care about and that didn't care about him. He didn't want to fight for the country that had killed Alfons and he didn't want to fight for the country that would be a touchy subject for years to come.

But he didn't want Alphonse to be in danger, and Alphonse being safer (because this was a World War, he could never be _safe_) outweighed all of the cons. They really did. Edward was certainly not a cheesy person, and if he had to fight in the German Army so that Alphonse could be shipped overseas somewhere like England, then fine. After all, they could still write.

Alphonse didn't take it too well.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

"Brother, are you sure- "Alphonse tried one last time.

He had to try, one last time. This had all happened so fast! He had barely had time to think! Edward had gone out that night while he was safe in bed in his brother's flat and when Alphonse had woken up the next day, Edward had fake German papers saying that he was 16 years old (just in case) and one ticket on a small ferry that could barely be called a ferry.

They'd only been together for one day, and he was saying goodbye again! Had this endeavour even been worth it!?

"Al, I can't have you living with me in Germany when I know that every day that you're here you could meet the same end as Alfons, just because I was selfish and kept you close by."

"But it's not selfish!" Alphonse bit back, starting to feel a small tantrum coming on as hot tears prickled his eyes, children a lot younger than him speaking a language he didn't know milled around them, staring at the two young men talking in that strange language.

"Al, I'm not going to cave in! This is for your own good!" It killed Edward to start with the whole 'you have to be cruel to be kind' act. They were a double team, best friends, twins. Equals. His age did not mean that he suddenly had the right to boss his brother around, but then, to get his brother through the next few years alive, he had to abuse his power. He wanted to cry. But he would certainly not weep over such stupid things.

Alphonse looked at his brother with sharp, accusing eyes. It would have looked like hatred if Edward didn't know better, and saw the hurt and desperation there too.

Alphonse tried another tactic.

"Well, if anything is selfish, I think that you only thinking about how this affects your own conscience is selfish!" Of course, it didn't work, his words held no meaning, and no logic.

In the end, Edward had had enough and gripped Al's shoulders tightly, forcing him to look into his older brother's eyes.

"Al, you are a direct parallel of Alfons Heiderich, and so your paths in life are similar, so I'm not going to leave you in the perfect situation where you can be shot by a Nazi soldier for no reason. Call that selfish all you like, but it won't change a thing."

A few moments of silence, and Alphonse hugged his brother tightly.

"I'll write to you constantly, you'll be sick of hearing, okay?"

"And I will do the same." Edward promised, staring into his brother's eyes one last time before he left with the crowds.

"Auf weidersein!" Edward called out, waving madly. In the crowd of retreating backs, Edward saw an arm wave in his direction madly. He smiled, and looked down at the form in his hand.

After naming himself as Alphonse's legal guardian, he could now sign to consent for Alphonse to leave the country on the Kindertransport as he said so. He pulled out a pen and signed the paper, handing it over to the soldier waiting, a stack of papers similar in his hands.

_Well, _Edward thought, handing it over and then turning his back on the port. _There goes my freedom._

**I completely made up the form that Edward has to sign, but it seemed logical. The country should have to keep track of its children. Also, it might not be historically correct about the having to sign up for the army if you ticked certain boxes, but that kind of thing happened in some British colonies, though I'm not sure if it was WWI or WWII. I know that it definitely happened to Jamaica at some point in WWII, because my Great Grandma, who is Jamaican, was telling me about it.**

**I'm not sure if I was correct in spelling Auf ****Weidersein****. I think I am, because when I change my marking language to German the red line goes away.**

**I can't wait to write the next chapter, because I know a lot of WWII British history, but not its dates and order. I can't wait to learn! **

**The kinder transport I have only vaguely heard of. I believe it is the same as the evacuees that we had in Britain (but usually if the kids were over about 14 – 15 then they weren't bothered with, and they generally stayed in the country) but I hope it's a little different for those reasons!**

**If these little things I've made up aren't true, then this story cannot logically take place, so shhh! Don't tell anyone!**

**Can't wait to see you next chapter, please drop a line!**

**~BS**


	3. Import and Export

**Here we go, This is the start of something!**

**(when Al says 'queer' in the letter, I mean odd, or quaint, not gay!)**

**Chapter Three: Import and Export**

_Dear Brother,_

_I'm so glad that you thought ahead and sent word to that inn that you'd stayed at with Hohenheim. I cannot speak a word of English, and what little German I know does not go down well here!_

_I don't know how much geography of England you know, but I'm somewhere in the North, well above London, in a little mining and shipping town. It's pleasant, but chilly here, though the locals are nice and friendly to me. I have had nothing but warm greetings and offerings of rooms._

_I wonder if all of the countries in this world have an abundance of pubs, because this town is just like Germany! It might have something to do with the sailors and miners though. It reminds me of the Youswell coal mines, but less poor. It is the same in the sense that generations seem to live here. It's a home and a grave._

_I would like to go down South, by places called London and Manchester, the big cities, but that is where English children are being moved away from, it seems. There must be a danger here too, because you are thinking along the same lines as these people. Children are being evacuated up Northbound, stopping off here, a place called York and even up into this queer country on the top of this country called Scotland._

_(It's all very strange, Brother, Britain is a country, and within it, are countries!)_

_I am getting to know people, and some English language too. A young girl just your elder took pity on me and has taken it upon herself to teach me some English, though I daresay that whatever language I may learn in this town, it will not be recognisable! You must hear how people speak to each other! Words like 'yem' and 'hinny' cannot possibly be real!_

_On another note, how are you doing, Brother? I know you're concerned about the Germany Army demanding your contribution, but you can't be too sure yet, or can you? I hope they simply overlook you, I'd hate for you to be dragged onto the battlefield to fight for something that you don't believe in, so I would like for you to give me word that if you are sent for, you are the most important person on that field, whatever your own mind may tell you, and therefore, you must act the coward and save yourself if that is what is to happen._

_I have the odd feeling that even if you agree to this, you will find some loophole in this promise and act selflessly anyway, so I don't know why I bother to ask, but for what it's worth, please try._

_It's a bit nerve wracking, not knowing when I'm going to see you next, but I suppose I'll have something to look forward to every other day, and I hope you're looking forward to this too, Brother._

_It seems like my writing voice is a lot more formal than my speaking one!_

_Best wishes? Is that what I say at the end?_

_~Alphonse_

Alphonse read over his letter again, knowing that it sounded like it had been written by someone else's hand, but there wasn't much he could do about it. If he re-wrote it again, he'd have to send it the next day, and really, he just wanted to hear his brother's voice back, even if it was only in his head as he read the words.

He slotted the paper into an envelope and opened the door to his little room, scampering down the stairs to meet the landlord of the rooms upstairs and the pub downstairs. His brother was paying for the room until further notice (since he was the only one with any money now) and the landlord was a very nice man, who excused his 'nationality' quite nicely and usually taught him a few new phrases every day.

"Hello!" Alphonse chirped, one of the very few things that Edward had had time to teach him.

"Good morning," said Ian, who was carrying some clean glasses with GUINNESS printed on them into the bar.

"Good morning?" Alphonse replied, following him like a little dog into the bar. Ian put down the glasses on the bar and turned to Alphonse, showing him his watch.

"Hello, good morning," he said, pointing at the little hand, which was at the 7.

"Ah!" Alphonse exclaimed. "Good morning, Ian!"

The barman rolled his eyes. "Just get yer arse down t' the post office kiddo," he said, unlocking the front door. Alphonse just looked at him with a confused kind of smile and practically jumped out of the door.

"Bye!" said Al, and ran off down the road. Ian just rolled his eyes again. He didn't know much about the kid, because he was armed with only a few phrases in English, and only slightly more German. All he could get was that he had a brother, and that he'd come from Germany. He supposed he was a nice enough kid though.

Alphonse burst into the Post Office, a grin plastered on his face. There was already a small queue, and in it he recognised a woman and a small child who was clutching a letter just like he was. He knew that the boy was an evacuee, since he'd arrived just after he had, with his vest and shirt and two jumpers on, and then a small bag of belongings and an oversized box around his neck, going around door to door with someone from the church, knocking on doors. He was probably writing a letter to his mother.

Edward said that London was going to be bombed.

If that was where he was from, he wondered if his mother would write back.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie

Edward received Alphonse's letter a day late, due to the amount of letters going around at the time, but it didn't really bother him. He did get excited when he heard the letter box clunk and the letters land with a soft thud on the floor. He walked downstairs to retrieve them (he lived in an upstairs flat) and was happy to see one addressed in Al's handwriting.

He didn't even bother to take it upstairs, and just ripped it open where he was, sitting down on the floor by the door to read it.

He smiled at the letter, mostly amused by Alphonse's uncertainly posh and awkward tone. He supposed his brother would get used to it.

Reading over the part about him being sent to the army made him remember the rest of his mail. He looked down past the paper in his hands and his heart immediately sank. Even though he knew it was coming, it was even worse to see it there for real. The very formal looking recruitment letter sat waiting for him.

Edward read the rest of Alphonse's letter as slowly as possible to try to delay when he would finally have to open the one waiting for him next.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

"What's your first language anyway?" asked Emily, trying to make things easier for herself and Alphonse. They sat in a noisy pub which her father owned, Emily absently eating pork scratchings. Alphonse had decided that he didn't like them.

"…" Alphonse paused, wondering first, what Emily had said, and second, how he should reply.

'Language.' He knew that word, Edward had translated it for him.

"I don't understand your language," Alphonse replied, like a cashier told to repeat the same phrase over and over. Emily laughed, causing Alphonse to blush.

"Yes, I know that, Hun." She said, patting the younger on the head. Alphonse didn't really know how to react to that, so he just sat there and took it. "You just sit tight, I'll be two seconds," she told him, and walked off.

"Bye," Alphonse called, having no idea what she'd said.

He liked Emily, he'd decided. He'd never really had a friend around his age before, besides from Winry, so he wasn't entirely sure if he could be friends with someone he didn't understand. She was pretty anyway. Emily had blonde hair past her shoulders which was fine and silvery at the top and little wispy strands of silver sometimes fell in her eyes.

Her eyes were green. Not green, green. They were this weird green in the middle and brown on the outside. Not exactly pretty, but fascinating.

Emily came back a few minutes later with a pen and paper in her hands. Alphonse watched her fingers as she drew on the scrap of paper. They were short and bony, but her face was chubby.

She turned the paper around to face him. It had a (slightly bad) drawing of him on.

"My name is Emily," she told him, pointing at herself.

Well, he recognised 'Emily.' That was her name. Her father had told him when they'd met. He'd pointed at her, and said 'Emily.'

"Yes." He replied.

"Your name is Alphonse." She said, pointing at him. Al raised an eyebrow.

"Yes." He was Alphonse.

Silence. Emily just looked at him expectantly while Alphonse thought hard, not knowing what to do, but wanting to please.

"Ah!" he said, having cottoned on.

"Your name is Alphonse," he said, pointing at himself.

Emily thumped her head off the table in frustration. It was going to be a long morning.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Alphonse,_

_I have received a letter, (as I damn well assumed I would) from the recruitment office. Try not to worry about it, I've been a soldier before, after all, so I'll manage fine - Though my address will have changed by the time you come to write back. I'll enclose it on another piece of paper in the envelope._

_Don't write so fucking posh._

_Don't you dare go south. That would be moving towards the danger, and that would be stupid. (And yes, I am aware that I am doing just that, but shut up and take it.)_

_I think you should know that you are currently living in one of the most important ports in England, so don't, by any means, think you are safe. I have mentioned to you before that England might be bombed, haven't I? Well then, if they are going to bomb London, I'd imagine that they'll try to weaken the British into stopping their imports and exports. If the Blitzkrieg does go ahead, move to the midlands, do you hear? They will certainly bomb the port. _

_This is so shit, don't you think? I cannot wait until this war is over and we can go and live somewhere quiet, like Denmark or something._

_(Well, I say quiet. They were surprise invaded not too long ago and just lay down and took it, they were so shocked. )_

_I'm glad to hear someone is teaching you English, but I'm sure that you'll pick it up soon enough. At least I did. For the first couple of weeks, I understood very little, but I grasped more or less it after about a month. Though my English is not as good as my German, I can try to write to you in it, if it would help?_

_Ha ha, that'd kill you, wouldn't it!? Not knowing what I said! I should do that all the time, you'll learn so much faster!_

_I'll stop teasing you now, my apologies._

_Love and all that shit that you like._

_~Edward_

Alphonse received the letter two days after he'd sent his own, his chest feeling like it'd burst with excitement. He fell into the pub, bypassed the bar and went straight to knock on the door leading up the stairs to Ian's flat.

"It's under yer bloody door! Stop yer hollering!" Ian had yelled angrily. Apparently he'd been on the phone. He'd grasped 'stop,' and so he'd left, and upon opening to door to his small flat, had begun grinning ecstatically when he saw the letter had been slid under the door. He smiled. Ian was irritable, but nice.

So his brother had been sent for. It wrenched at his heart to read it, and his brother's attitude towards it. This wasn't some game, and this wasn't the same army. He didn't know anybody, and he'd have to carry a gun, and shoot people. This wasn't the kind of 'soldier' that Ed was used to.

Well, if his brother was not crying, he was not going to cry either, he told himself.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

"You two in here again?" Said Emily's dad, Aiden, opening the door that lead up to the flat above the pub. "You're always in here, alone, talking in some suspicious language," he said, grinning lopsidedly. Emily tried to send him a foul look, but she couldn't help smiling. Alphonse just sat there, confused.

"Divin't yeh give me yer hacky look yeh ungreatful sod!" Aiden grinned at his daughter and considered Alphonse intently. They'd never really spoken that much, but he seemed like an alright kid. For a German.

"Canny little lad, aren't ye?" he said fondly. Alphonse just smiled politely. Thanks to Emily, and a week of tutoring, he could speak basic English, though he still couldn't read or write anything.

He'd gone to the library (an impressive building with incredibly high ceilings upstairs and downstairs) and taken out an atlas, intending to learn some geography. He wanted to know some history, but since he couldn't read in English, there was no point. Though Aiden knew quite a bit, he was a little cautious of speaking to him. Not that the man was scary, but he wasn't very familiar with anyone, and he knew that his 'nationality' caused quite a stir among the town's people.

He'd received a few curious stares when he'd gotten off the train at a place called Newcastle Upon Tyne, a small city in comparison to Munich, but confusing none the less. The wide streets were filled with people and a language that he couldn't understand, and so he'd just stood at the station for half an hour, holding a small suitcase and a label reading 'Alphonse Elric – Germany' until some nice soul had asked him if he was lost.

The horrid looks had stopped as soon as he'd removed the label.

People were closely knit in the area it seemed, and everybody knew everybody, children ran around on the streets without supervision with their friends, playing games, and though there were a lot of families who seemed quite poor, everyone seemed friendly enough.

He'd been taken to a little town that was knit even tighter, loud and cheerful and busy. Shops and pubs and bakeries and schools all tightly packed close together on the front street and a market square selling an odd array of things from sweets and meat to watches every other day.

It was a nice place to be, surrounded by people. It wasn't too lonely, since people generally made an effort to include him and since he wasn't quite an adult, the children usually dragged him around to play when he wasn't with Emily being taught English or at the Post Office posting letters or wandering around looking for odd jobs to do.

He needed some action. He couldn't do this day to day. He needed something big, and something new.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Dear Alphonse,_

_-I'll tell you about the army in a moment, but this is important._

_I'm not some kind of future reader, but I do know that Germany is making bombs capable of this mass destruction from Alfons' work at the rocketry warehouse. What I said earlier is entirely possible. Keep a look out._

_But try not to get too bogged down._

_Anyway, it's not too bad here, I think they've found that I don't need that much training, as I've proved myself capable of everything they've thrown at me. Unfortunately, I discovered, I am quite handy with a gun._

_I don't think I'll be put on the front line for a few weeks until this basic training is over, but when that happens, be prepared for long waits. It might be harder to write, stuck in a trench or in a camp. I have the feeling I'm just going to be thrown straight onto the front line. _

_What are you doing in England? Have you got some friends yet? What's Emily like? Am I jealous? A little! (No, I have Winry, waiting at home, right? You'll have to tell me a little bit more about home, since we didn't get to talk too much.)_

_I am missing you a lot, more than I was before we found each other again. God, I'm such a sap._

_~Edward_

**It is true that the Port of Blyth was to be bombed in WWII. You can look up what happened, but it'd be a bit of a spoiler.**

**I'll see about getting a little more Ed in next chapter, but since I've never been at war, I don't know what kind of things he'll see and what his environment will be like, so there won't be much. Anyway, this is mostly set to be Alphonse's POV. And no complaints, because I need it like that for the storyline.**

**Oh, and I think a couple of people misinterpreted, but I meant that SilentRainDrops assisted (greatly) with the ending to the whole story, and not chapter one.**

**I'm writing up a Hetalia FrUK romance fic that's a bit Christmassy, which isn't my usual style (in fact, I'm not really a fan of that pairing) but it's going to be more sweet and romantic and honest, rather than funny. I just wanted to try my hand at a bit of romance, and I found the perfect inspirational song, and the perfect two characters to write about. Anyway, I think I'm going to call it Home, I don't know if you're interested.**

**I have to have 2 computers open to type this up, it's such a pain in the bum. Oh well. I really have to look into some dates for the Blitz. **

**A 'hacky look' is a dirty look. People in England, and especially Northumberland, say 'hacky dirty.' 'Canny' is good, or nice, sweet and friendly to describe a person, and 'canny on' can mean 'be careful' or can also mean 'big.' "Our George is a canny height now." for example. But it is always a friendly, polite term. 'Yem' is home and 'hinny' is a pet name similar to honey, but slightly less romantic.**

**Al goes on a bit of an adventure in the next chapter!**

**Long chapter, huh? What did you think of the layout then?**

**See you in chapter 24!**

**~BS**


	4. Doodlebug

**Hello again. Sorry (for those of you who care) that Failures was not updated when it so deserved to be. The new image is from the History Place, my main source of info. If you're finding the Geordie accent hard to place, 'How, now, brown cow' sort of becomes 'Hoo noo broon kuw.'(The 'r' is rolled in brown) or just listen to the Lampton Worm Song on Youtube.**

**You would not believe how much research I did to find out Alphonse's wages! I still don't understand how much a shilling is worth compared to pound sterling today, so I just left it. If anyone can give me a comparison, it'd be great!**

**I will see you at the bottom. **

**Chapter Four: Doodlebug**

From September 7th, 1940 for 57 consecutive nights, London was bombed. 50000 buildings were destroyed and 375000 Londoners were left homeless. 18629 men, 16201 women and 5028 children, along with 695 unidentified bodies were killed. Business as usual, Britain.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Dear Brother,_

_Emily is very kind to me; I think we might be friends. I think. I don't know her too well, and have yet to give myself an identity, so I don't think that she knows me too well either. _

_I have bought a dictionary, Brother, and though I still cannot write, I can speak enough and read a little. I can never say what I really need to say, though._

_I have found myself a small job that pays okay, though I don't know if you'll approve. _

_There is a man who comes around every Sunday with a trailer full of sacks of coal, but he's old and he can't lift them and carry them to people's doors, so when I asked if there were any jobs going around, Aiden, Emily's father, told me he could do with a lad to carry the coal._

_The man who owns the truck is very nice and is called Urwin. _

_I'm very far from London, Brother. Unless they have a bomb that can wipe out the whole of Britain then I should be okay. Would you please worry about yourself for 5 minutes before someone kills you while you're not looking. I'm so scared about you dying, Brother, that I'd really appreciate it if you stopped worrying about me and concentrated on not being killed before I get to see you again. Your danger is more real than mine._

_On another note, how are you doing? What is it like being in the army in this world? Is it much different from back in Amestris? I know the uniforms are certainly different!_

_Winry missed you a lot, Brother, of course she is still waiting for you (another reason not to get yourself killed). I imagine she still misses you. She didn't really know whether to say that you had died, and move on, or keep hoping - it was a really awful predicament, Brother, she didn't want to move on because she felt bad for abandoning you. I wonder how she took my disappearance? At least I got to say a goodbye of sorts._

_Mustang didn't take you disappearing off too well either, nor did the rest of the team. He tried to say that you were going to cause a lot of paperwork like the way he always does, then stopped and apologised to me for acting like a twat. I don't quite know what Mustang believes, I think he's a little on the fence. _

_It would be good if we could kind of open up a temporary vortex and say we were fine, see how everyone was, and then say goodbye. It's impossible, I know, but it would make me feel a lot better knowing that everything was okay in our world, and then I could probably live just a little more contently in this world. I'm sure you feel the same._

_I feel like I should really be doing something more to help this world, and since there's nothing I can do to help this world, I am wondering if there's something I can do to help this country. Though, this country is fighting against Germany, and that is where you are, so… I don't know what to do, Brother. I feel like I'm freeloading off this economy, and these people, and this goodwill and spirit. I feel like I should be giving something back. Did you ever feel like that about Germany at some point? I don't think you did. I don't think that you had any sort of empathy with Germany as a country, though I know you felt, and still feel the people. Maybe it was because Germany was so broken. It feels like everyone here is united, but the thing is, Brother, they're all united against what you'll end up fighting for. This feels wrong. It has to stop. And yet, there really is nothing I can do. There is little honesty in this world, it's scary, how everything is so far apart, and yet in your face. I'm scared of big countries, like China, Russia and the United States. Just imagine what they could do if they all got together!? They could destroy the world and tiny little insignificant England and Germany would be crushed, just because three people who are trying to represent everyone have a fight. It's not fair. _

_In our world, unity wasn't so scary. Things were sorted on a personal level, and not endangering the lives of thousands. And then there was the civil war._

_This brings me back to the forthcoming bombings in London._

_Think how many people are going to die just for Hitler to make a point, and a wrong point at that. Think of how many people will lose their children, and parents, their jobs and their homes. Think of the lives that this one man is going to wreck. This is so wrong. He's worse than Bradley. In a way, he has more power, and yet less. He's more frightening, certainly. Maybe it's because he's a human being, just like you and me._

_I wonder what happened to him to make him so twisted and hateful inside. Something horrid must have happened. Maybe his mother died, just like ours, and he made a mistake, just like us. _

_But his mistake was a lot bigger, and nastier, because he was all alone and didn't have a brother to keep him company. _

_I'll stop. I feel as if I might be done for treason or something, just feeling compassion with Hitler._

_I love you, and miss you, a lot._

_~Alphonse_

Al's bed at Ian's inn was not the best thing since sliced bread. The mattress was thin, and the old wooden frame was a little old and cranky with him if he wasn't too gentile sitting down. The room was nice enough though. It consisted only of a bedroom that was about 4 yards2 with a little cupboard in the corner where Al left his suitcase and the few other items of clothes that he'd acquired with his little money in his stay. It was nice enough though. There was, thankfully, no damp (as of yet, winter was still to come) and the place was clean enough. Alphonse was rarely there unless to sleep anyway. It was not like Ed's flat. There was no kitchen, so he either ate downstairs in the pub, at Aiden's or picked up something from the bakery.

Since his only job was on a Sunday, he had a lot of free time, and was bored easily by hanging around Ian's. Twice or thrice a week, he went to see Emily, and if she wasn't tutoring him, at work (she worked at the post office for the time being) or busy doing odds and ends for her father, she'd show him around the neighbouring towns. They never went far though. He hadn't re-visited the main city since he'd been dropped off, as he did not have enough money to pay for a ride, and walking wouldn't be worth it, because by the time he got there, he'd have to start heading back if he wanted to return before dark. Besides, he didn't fancy walking that far on his own. It'd be boring.

Sunday was exciting. He had a job to do.

He'd get up at seven, sharp and let himself out with the key that Ian left on the bar on Saturday night (Ian was a lie in kind of man, and mass didn't start until eight) and then post it back through the letterbox after locking the door behind him. Urwin would pass the pub (Oliver's, it was called) at about 20 past and stop for Alphonse to jump on, and that he did, perching himself amongst the bags on coal. It was like sitting on thousands of bony knees and elbows.

Urwin had one, short, sturdy pit pony who was called Rob to pull the cart. Al had asked why the horse had such a human name (as best he could, with his broken English) and Urwin had merely shrugged, leaving Al to drop the subject and wonder.

When they reached the first house, Al was as enthusiastic as he had been the week before, his first go. He jumped down from the cart and heaved the heavy bag onto his shoulders, coal dust puffing through the holes in the thick sack, making him cough and tingling his eyes. He'd knock on the door, grinning, his face rosy with the effort, and pass the bag over to whoever was the first to the door, which was usually the man of the house, or the eldest son, tidy in a jacket, best shoes and flat cap for mass in a few minutes. He'd receive thanks, take the tiny pennies that were Urwin's pay, and scamper off to the trailed, jumping up and clambering to the front near where Urwin sat with the reigns in his hands, and slipped the coins into the man's jacket pocket.

Sometimes it was easier, and people had little windows in their back garden walls if they lived on a terrace – which most did – and he could just tip the contents of the bag into the deposit in the shed. The only downside was that dust went everywhere, and by the time he got back, his face and hands were black and his eyes were itchy.

By the time they were near the end of the trip, Al's legs started to feel a little stiff and his arms like jelly (the bags were _heavy_!) and Urwin laughed at him trying to stagger up the steps of the last house, a grand house, but all in good fun. He'd have to leave the bags on the steps of the last few houses, because the occupants were at church, simply hoping that it would still be there when they got back (it usually was) and then they went around starting at the opposite side next time so Urwin could collect his pay from both weeks.

Al jumped off when Urwin passed Aiden's pub (The Royal Tavern) to the same words each time.

"Wash yer mug like ye mean it, lad."

Al had repeated the phrase to Emily on his first Sunday. Emily was too busy staring at his blackened attire to even listen to him to first time around, and dragged him upstairs to attack him with a face cloth and a ridiculous amount of soap.

He remembered the conversation. Emily had been talking simply, so that he'd understand exactly what she said, though most of the time, she didn't bother to dumb down her speech.

"_Al, Urwin does not have a boy to carry coal before. Why?"_

_Al shrugged, rubbing at his face, which was now red raw._

"_Because one, they go to church with Mum and Dad."_

_Al nodded. It made sense. It was just handy that Al had no familiarity with the religion and that Urwin just went to Monday mass instead._

"_And also coal dust makes you blind, Al. If you are around it too long."_

_Al didn't quite understand. "Pardon?"_

_Emily leaned forwards and covered his eyes with her hands. They smelt like harsh soap. Al just stood there, breathing in the smell of tarry soap and wondering what she was going on about._

"_Blind. You can't see, Al."_

"_I don't see." He replied, still a little confused._

"_Exactly." Emily lowered her hands. "Granddad can't see. He worked in mines for a long time. That is why Dad works in the pub."_

_Al was still a little miffed. Emily had told her that her granddad was dead._

"_Your granddad is dead," he told her, like she didn't know._

"_Yes, I know," said Emily, smiling only a tiniest bit. "He died of lung disease."_

_Al pretended to understand, though he knew that Emily knew he understood very little._

"_Al, you are only sixteen-"_

"_I am seventeen." He corrected. _

"_You are only seventeen," she amended. "Don't go doing anything you'll regret later on when you end up with blindness, or pneumoconiosis or arthritis." She paused and rephrased._

"_Your brother would be sad, if you got sick from coal."_

_Al nodded._

"_My brother is called Edward." He told her. "He is nice. He is soldier."_

_Emily looked shocked at that. She knew Al came over from Germany, and that his brother was still over there, and since Al was such an empathetic person, she assumed they were just part of the unfortunate mass of Germans who'd got caught up in the politics gone wrong. She didn't understand how Al could like his brother so much if he was fighting for that cause. Maybe he was more of a child than she'd thought._

_Seeing the look of horror-bordering-on-pure-dislike that had rose up Emily's face, Al explained himself._

"_But he is nice. Edward is good. __Er… He has to… __He-he has to fight?" he said, wondering if his wording was right._

_Emily suddenly understood. She wondered for a moment, what both brothers must have been through to end up in such a predicament._

"_Well, if one of you is in so much danger, I don't think it's a good idea for you to be throwing yourself at it."_

Really, it was just a little job. He understood the fuss. He wasn't stupid. He knew (partly what he'd understood of Emily, and partly from his own logic) that the coal dust made his eyes hurt, and that carrying the bags made his legs hurt, and that the thick dust made him cough, but people worked like this their whole lives. It was a short job, which he did once a week. He felt like everything was out of proportion a little.

Of course, Al didn't really get the point behind all the objections. It was what the job and it's possible implications stood for. No one was mollycoddling him, after all.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Al,_

_You could feel compassion with an ant. I feel really cheesy for writing it down, but I think, if I don't write it down, then you'll never know, and if I do die (not saying anything) then you'd never know._

_Al, you are possibly the nicest person in history, this world and ours. Never once have I even cared what horrid thing might have happened to Adolf Hitler, I have only despised him. I want to hug you, and cry. It's that compassion that I miss the most, as this world has so little of it, and especially this country, right now. I hope you find an abundance of compassion in England. You deserve nothing more than to be surrounded by friends._

_I won't lie to you, it's pretty shit here. It's not like the army has a lot of money at the moment, so the conditions are bearable, and little more than that. There are a couple of decent people in my unit, especially a small man (smaller than me) called Kieran who is possibly Kain Feury's double. Applying the Heiderich Theory, I hope that he doesn't die in this war._

_I don't know if you're thick or something, but of all the jobs you could possibly get, you decide to carry around coal? Well done, you stupid fucker. Alfons was bad enough._

_I don't want to sound like I'm overreacting here, Al, but quite the job. I understand that it sounds petty and stupid to say so, and that no harm can be done in small doses (in theory) but Alfons Heiderich died of tuberculosis, which is a fatal lung disease, so just… don't tempt fate._

_I'm to be sent out at the beginning of September. To the front line. For two weeks. Let's see how long I'll last._

_I sigh in the cliché, and yet I still write 'with love.'_

_~Edward_

Of course the young man was terrified. This might be the last time his bother ever heard from him. Had he said enough? Too much? This had all happened before, so surely Al would be used to it?

No. No matter how many times Edward Elric would die, the shock could only ever get worse.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

Al was sitting listening to the radio in a field with Emily at the Quay. There were a few small boats in today, and a few young lads fishing, but it was quiet for the sea gulls screeching.

_Britain will not surrender. Not now, never before, and never here after. Germany can throw whatever it pleases at us and it may destroy the land, but it cannot destroy the people, the faith and spirit. _

Alphonse and Emily sat listening to Winston Churchill as he basically told Germay to bring it on. Al put his head in his hands.

"Brother said to me bombs would happen," he told her. Emily just kept staring into the waters that swayed sickeningly meters below them. Al swung his feet, which dangled off the edge of the land.

"He said to me they could kill a lot of er… they can kill a lot of people. Churchill is stupid man."

Emily finally glanced up. "Why is that?"

Al sighed, trying to find the right words. "He is saying 'cannot destroy people.' The bombs will destroy many people. Many, many people will die."

Emily sighed deeply, resting her chin on her hands. "I think you're misunderstanding him, Al. Churchill knows people are going to die, but he cannot say that on a radio broadcast. People know there are going to be deaths, but they only speak about how they will make it through. If every one person takes care of themselves, the masses keep on going as normal. Germany cannot defeat Britain if the population as a whole will not allow itself to be defeated. That is what Churchill is saying."

There was a silence, but for the tiny splash of a line entering the water.

"I think I understand."

Al moved his gaze from the waters to the sky, which was as white as a blank page for miles and miles. It looked solid. No bomb would make it through that cloud.

"In my country, there is no together," he told her, letting his mind wander back to Amestris. "The soldiers in charge. Family stays together. People save themselves. Brother and I save eachother. Country is the ground. It does not think about people. People think about themselves. There are lots of war."

"That doesn't sound like a very nice country." Emily commented quietly.

Al shrugged. "The country of the ground and the ruler is not nice. But you cannot judge all people on one person. And specially not country so divided. Lots of… er… Lots of colours and language. People with… er… with white faces, and brown faces, and red eyes, and yellow eyes, and blue eyes. White hair, and yellow hair, and black hair. Lots and lots of er…"

"Races." Emily supplied. "You live in a multi-racial country."

"Multi-racial?"

"Multi means lets of different things." She explained.

It wasn't until he'd come into this other world that he'd seen a new emotion. He's never experienced this 'patriotic' feeling that he got from everyone. His world was made of a few big countries that kept themselves to themselves. There was no one to show off to. This world was made up of many, many tiny countries, who showed all the other countries how great they are. People were proud.

"You like to be 'British.'" Al observed. Emily nodded.

"It makes me feel part of something. I can be proud of something," she told him. "My country has history, and language, and culture, is strong, and does good things."

"I am proud to be Alphonse Elric. Who is Amestrian."

"You come before your country." She noted.

Al nodded.

"My country is a small part of my identity. I am not part of my country. I live in it. And I do things for people. But not because they are Amestrian. Because they are nice."

"Maybe we should do things like that here too. Then there would be less warfare, if there was no grouping. If every man fought his own battles."

Al shook his head. "No. I am nice person. A nasty person who does not care about whole country on whole causes lots of death."

Emily didn't reply. Al made a link in his own mind.

"What Hitler wants can be done," he told her. "It happen in Amestris. All… er… race was killed at one time. And then again, when Edward and me are children. He can do it here, if he tries hard."

The two of them sat in silence, Emily wondering what was to happen to her country, while Al wondered how Ed was doing.

Churchill stopped talking long ago. The boys went home with their catches. The sky went pink. Then orange. Then red.

Emily stood up, taking the wireless with her, and Al followed after until he had to divert towards his own lodgings.

_There is no country called Amestris, _thought Emily as she went to bed that night. _Maybe that's what the country is called in his own language. But he almost sounds like he lived in another world._

Al trudged up the stairs to his bedroom, yawning.

_I wonder if Brother received my letter._

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Brother,_

_I don't know how to reply to those things that you say about me. I cannot even be flattered, it only makes we more and more worried. Please do not talk as if you are going to die, Brother. I know you are brazen, but it only makes me cry._

_The Heiderich Theory, Brother, what a wonderful name. That makes me smile._

_It's odd that I haven't come across any doubles here. Sometimes I see a person in passing who feels familiar, but no one that I've actually spoken to. I also hope that Kieran will get through. I see no flaws in the theory._

_I don't know if I just want to quit the job, Ed. I don't mean to be rebellious or anything, but it's not like I'm just doing it for money (not that I don't need any) but I feel like I'm helping out. Emily said something similar, and you're both scaring me a little (was that what you meant to do?). I'll give Urwin a week's notice, and then I'll go and find something else._

_Please don't talk like that, Brother, try to just get through with your head down. I have no experience with war, and I might be sounding like I'm talking rubbish, but please, don't do anything too heroic. Just get through the first fortnight._

_To write 'with love' doesn't make you a lesser man, you know._

_~Alphonse_

**Well hello everyone. Quick update. I have 2 days off school, but I am right back again, and have a lot of work, so I don't know if that will make a difference. I can't wait to write the next chapter! It's so exciting!**

**I need for anyone who knows, either from themselves, or a link to a site, which will give me a bit of a gist of how the pound sterling now compares to old English money (like ha'penny, shillings and pounds). I know that pounds were worth about the equivalent of £28 today, but I'm not too sure about the other coins.**

**I said Al was going to have an adventure, I'm sorry! I realised that I was moving on a little too quickly for the amount of chapters, so I thought I'd build on Emily and Al's relationship a bit, and have a bit of Al's life through his eyes.**

**The chapters are getting longer! This one's about 4,000 words and the last one was only about 3,000. My baseline is usually 2,500.**

**Just saw Rise of the Guardians. Great film. There's a good fanbase here for it too.**

**I wonder, how obvious am I? What do you think is going to happen? **

**~BS**


	5. Enemy Territory

**Good afternoon! I just watched Paint it, White! Hilarious! Though I laughed more at the bloopers. (My full stop button is screwed up, WTH? I have to give it a proper whack to get it to do anything *forcefully* …)**

**As a little pre-warning, 2 Hetalia characters are being written into the story (only shortly, they have just 1 scene each and the first one is in this chapter. If you haven't seen Hetalia, they will be similar to an OC, but if you HAVE seen it, they should hold strong significance, if I can write the scene as well as I want to, and I shall be re-posting those two respective scenes in the Axis Powers – Hetalia archive here on FF net.**

**Chapter Five: Enemy Forces**

_Brother,_

_Of course, you were right about the bombs, they have started falling over the more Southern half of the country, not quite here yet. I am sure you will have heard? I think I should warn everyone I can about what you said about here being bombed. Well, I can't _not_ say anything. I think I should. If I have the information, I should give it, correct? And then people can do as they wish, no harm done._

_I have acquired something of a reputation as a fixer. Though I obviously cannot use alchemy on this side of the Gate, I do know a lot about structure down to a sub-atomic level, so I have found out that I am actually quite handy at fixing thing the good old-fashioned way as well. I've acquired a surprising amount of money from odd jobs, and it's nice to be able to really afford things. I suppose you'll be happy to know that I stopped working for Urwin, telling him that you were concerned, as lung disease was in the family. Not for off, I suppose?_

_I believe I have gained a great friend in Emily, Brother, and if we do get back over to the other side of the Gate, I'll be sad to see her go. I'd say that she's as valued as Winry, but in an entirely different way, and I'm not quite sure what that way is, but I hope that I find out. All I want to do with her is learn more about her and spend time with her and she is an interesting person, she knows a lot about history and geography, and I do like to learn._

_In some ways, being here reminds me of old time in Amestris. I think I was incredibly lucky, Brother, to be welcomed with such open arms in such an optimistic, tightly knit place. I can imagine that your experience was more than slightly different, being thrown into a corrupt and confused Germany with no connections other than Father. _

_It's nice here, because I have become part of something. I have something to look forward to, and people know me, and my name, and say hello to me in the street. It feels like 'home,' but more homely than 'home' was, if you understand me correctly. I think it's a great pity if you haven't experienced this._

_Brother, I feel traitorous for even thinking this, but something that Emily said to be about being 'proud to be British' made me think like this. I think I have mentioned before about feeling like I owe something. Well, last night, I lay awake and wondered about what it would be like to fight for this country. I shot down (ha ha ) the idea because, of course, that would mean I would be fighting you, and I refuse to do that, but the difference would be that you were forced, and it would be my choice. I wouldn't fight because I am 'proud to be British,' which I am not, since I am not actually British, but for everyone else. _

_I'd always thought that a cheesy saying, to do something dedicated to others. I'd say I have only done that for you, but I haven't. I have fought with you, and for you, and alongside you, and done things that you have asked of me, but I have never actually dedicated an action to you. It's difficult to describe, but it's similar to wanting to give a present, but there's something selfish in it too. I don't know if you understand._

_Well anyway, it's out of the question. I just wanted to say something about it._

_I'm going to leave now, Brother. Please write back as soon as possible._

_With love,_

_Al_

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

"I wrote to Brother with what you and I were saying about pride," Al commented, sitting next the Emily on a low wall that ran up the road on the way to the beach. Seagulls were screeching to each other loudly overhead over some disagreement and children were running around in the freezing weather, half naked despite the cold.

"What do you mean?" she replied. She pulled he coat further around her. It was cold. She always felt a little boring next to Alphonse, in that bright red coat that he wore with the funny symbol on the back.

"Er…" Al paused in thought, swinging his feet while he searched for the words. His speech was _better_ but he still found it hard to _find_ the words. It was like… He knew all the words, like a dictionary, but he still had to translate in his mind, so it took a while for him to flick through the pages to find the correct words. He found a few suitable ones and continued.

"The army. I will not, because Brother is fighting with Germany at Britain, and though he has no… No… Connection?" no, wrong word. Damnit, he _knew _there was a word. "No…"

"Allegiance?" Emily supplied. Al grinned and thanked her.

"Ja," (Emily laughed at the random German word. It rarely happened, but sometimes he would often slip in words that she supposed were 'Amestrian' without noticing or if he just couldn't be bothered to find the word he needed in English) "Brother has no allegiance with Germany, but he fights for it. I cannot fight for Britain because I will be fighting against Brother… by… accident"

"Inadvertently." Emily told him. Al nodded.

"Yes, inadvertently means accident?" he asked. Emily shrugged.

"It's the word you are looking for. It mostly means accident. But it's a better word."

"Okay. Well, I don't know if I am good for fighting, I don't like to kill people." He confessed. Emily smiled at him.

Al was an odd one for her, because in some ways, he was intelligent beyond his years and mature in the way that he could look after himself and the way he viewed the world and people made sense, but also, the way he clung to people like his brother was very similar to the way a child would cling to their parent. He hated to loose anyone, or to disappoint. He liked to cause people to smile, and tried too desperately to get on with people. It wasn't quite needy, just childish. The way he looked at the political situation was also childish in some ways.

"People do not go to war because they want to kill people, Alphonse," she reminded him.

"I know!" Al told her, a little offended. "You go to help others and to help your country. For the better good?"

"Greater good."

"Yes, that. But also, you have to kill people. I don't know if I can do that. For example, in an unreal situation-"

"Hypothetical situation,"

"Yes, okay. Hypothetical situation, a man is asked if he could kill his best friend and save his family. Obviously, there is one that he loves more than the other, but still, he'd rather not kill either, there are no… greater odds. And so he cannot kill his friend and his family is dead as result. It is like that for me, but in the way that _anybody _is _everybody _if I make sense."

Emily shrugged. "A little. But I don't think you should go to war, unless you can't help it, Alphonse. However you might feel about it."

"Why is that? Men fight in wars; that is honourable, yes?" He asked, almost mocking the statement itself in the way it came out bitter.

Emily punched him none-too-lightly in the arm. "Certainly not! You don't do it of you don't want to, Alphonse! As long as you don't hurt anybody, do what you want! This is your life. Be selfish."

Alphonse was confused. What she said made sense in the whole, but not in perspective.

"What does God say?" asked Al, remembering that she was Christian. Emily snorted.

"Leave me to believe as I want. You don't believe in God, do you?"

Al shook his head.

"Well then why should I make you do what he wants you to? That's a waste of your life and you turn out to be right in saying that God does not exist-"

"I know that he does not-"

"If you would listen to my whole argument, then maybe you could apply what you are telling me to yourself! Listen!"

"Okay, I'm sorry." Al amended quickly.

"Better. Anyway, if you're right, and God does not exist, and I've had you following something you don't believe all your life, that's unfair. Al, I know you're not a bad or selfish person, and so I know that left to your own devices, you will continue to sacrifice little bits of yourself without caring for your own wellbeing for the sake of others. And others can be anyone from your brother, to the whole of Britain. Al, help where help is needed. There are plenty of men who are willing to throw their lives away, and I don't want you to do that. Help a person, not the people. Help somewhere where you (she poked him in the chest a little too hard for it to mean nothing) are needed, and not where _someone _is needed."

"I understand." He told her reassuringly, feeling quite honoured that he was cared for like that.

"Do you really?" she asked, suspiciously.

"Entirely."

She leaned over and wrapped her arms around him, smiling with a wash of relief. Al sat stiffly until he worked out what she'd just done. Did he really mean that much to her? Al hugged her back and leaned his chin on the top of her head.

"I'm sorry." He told her. Emily didn't look up.

"Why?" she mumbled into his coat, taking a fistful of the material at his back, as if she could anchor him to her forever until she was sure he was safe from his own selflessness.

"I don't know." He mumbled. It had just felt needed.

Al's coat smelled weird, not like Al at all. Like oil and grease, like a garage. It smelled like outside and mud and… blood.

She had the feeling that this was not Al's coat.

"Al?" she asked, pulling away from him slightly so that she could look at his face. "Is this your coat?"

Al smiled. "No, how did you know?"

Emily just shrugged.

"It's Brother's." Al took off his coat and held it in his hands. "This coat _is _Brother." Emily gave him a funny look. Was that just a language difference, or was Al trying to be deep again?

"What do you mean?"

Al sat looking puzzled. What did he mean? He gave a world weary sigh that Emily never expected to come from Al, of all people.

"Brother and I don't have a house in Amestris. Brother worked for the army."

"Oh?"

"Not in the way he does now. He was a major, and the army at home is different. This country is run by the military, and Brother was good friends with the Colonel at East City, where we were from. Colonel wants to be the Fuhrer. Bradley is a bad leader, and Colonel wants to fix the country. Ed is such a good soldier, Colonel was good to find him. Ed did not fight in wars, he helped the country. Colonel sent him on missions around the country helping people mostly, and I went with him, even though I wasn't actually in the army with Brother. But Brother is good for trouble, and we got into a lot of fights and such. Brother used to dress in different clothes to the military uniform because he wanted to be different. He did not want to conform to the rules. We were free from the rule, he wanted to say, and he used to wear stupid leather trousers and he grew his hair long and wore a bright red coat."

"Your Brother sounds like he must have caused some stick with the army for acting like such a little punk brat," Emily commented, smiling. Edward sounded like the polar opposite of Al.

"He did with some people, because he was loud and obnoxious, but he is also very clever and wants to help people and very selfless, and so more people saw him as an icon than as an annoyance."

"I see. So the coat became an icon."

"Exactly."

"… But then Brother disappeared after getting himself caught up in a plot and an organisation that was a lot bigger than we thought it was. I could do nothing to help him at the time, and then shortly after the incident, I lost my memories of everything that had happened since Brother had joined the army. I thought I was ten years old."

"Bloody hell, Al-"

"No interrupting, I'm in the story!" Al chastised. Emily smiled and apologised.

"So Ed was gone, and I was just going off stories that people were telling me, but no one really knew what had happened except for me, and so I went around doing Brother's job unofficially, and I grew out my hair and wore his coat so people kind of felt better about it, but I asked around a lot if anyone knew what had happened to Brother.

And then we found each other in Germany."

Emily raised her eyebrows at the abrupt ending, but didn't question Al. If he didn't want to tell her, he had every right not to.

"That's some story. For a coat." Emily commented, looking down at the item of clothing sceptically.

"The coat has some story. Brother means a lot to me, and the coat means a lot to Brother. Brother made a new one when he got to Germany, I think. He was happy I had the old one, but he let me keep it."

They sat in silence for a while, just listening to the laughing children and the seagulls screeching as they swooped down and stole chips from people's hands.

"I really fancy some fish and chips-"

"I wonder how Brother's doing?"

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

The noise was overwhelming.

Even after a while of having his ears assaulted with the repetitive noise of semi-automatics and grenades and the like, it still set him on edge, and he often found that he had so much adrenaline that he couldn't concentrate in what he needed to do to stay alive.

Ed often felt a lot more respect for Riza Hawkeye (which was saying something, because he already respected her an awful lot) lately because he had finally learned what it did to a person to look down the barrel of a gun and end someone's life.

At the moment though, it seemed like they were coming worse off. Who was he fighting? He didn't even know anymore. Was it the Russians, the British or the French today? He had been sure that France had been taken over… Or at least Paris, but he wasn't sure of much anymore, his mind was just filled with shouting and continuous bangs. It was like a slice of heaven to get back to camp and see if he had a letter from Al. It was like a scene of another world waiting for him. It was good to hear that at least this was paying off, and that he'd done the right thing. Al was safe. That was his saving grace, he could live a half-life through Al. Al was safe. Of course, he knew that Al would be getting a little bored stuck in that little town all the time and would want a slice of the action, but there really wasn't space in his mind to worry about Al at the same time as everything else that was going on at the moment.

He was unbelievably happy about the discovery of Emily. Emily would make him stay. Emily would inadvertently keep him up North and relatively safe. This girl was like some kind of angel to Ed. As long as she kept Al safe and happy, he owed her so much-

He was on the floor.

Ed took a moment to wonder what had happened. Two seconds ago, he'd been crouching in a trench with just his arms and his gun over the ridge firing at the opposing side and now he was lying on his back and there was definitely _more_ shouting.

Oh _shit_ his shoulder hurt so much.

"EDVARD!"

A voice he recognised, that of a higher ranking soldier he shared a bunk with cut into his muddled thoughts like a rusty razor blade.

Someone was leaning over the top of him and blocking out his sun.

"Edvard, are you okay!?"

Bright blue eyes were looking down on his through a fringe of blonde hair that was usually smart and slicked back.

Ludwig, he was sure his name was. Or Earwig, or something equally weird. He couldn't pronounce the last name. Bell-something. Bell-smite? He didn't know.

"I-I'm fine. I'm fine." Edward whipped his head around himself. What the fuck was going on?

He felt something warm and sticky trickle down his collar and onto his chest.

"Oh for fuck's sake," he mumbled, sitting up abruptly. Ludwig aimed a swipe at his head that knocked Edward back to the ground.

"You idiot, we are still being shot at! Let me see that!"

He'd been shot, in the shoulder. No, on his collar bone, he could feel it weirdly when he moved his arm.

Well shit.

Edward obediently lay where he was while Ludwig crouched down next to him to check the wound.

"Ah, it's not that bad, you won't die…" Ludwig said. Edward gritted his teeth at the older man, his hard stare vicious and offensive, like an angered cat.

"I fucking know that! Get off me and get me my gun! I've fucking had worse!"

Edward attempted to throw the older off by pushing him. The wound was to his flesh arm, unfortunately, and it was pretty much rendered useless. The bullet must have shattered his collarbone and got lodged somewhere in his shoulder. It hurt like fuck, wherever it was.

Ludwig seemed at a bit of a loss. Edward certainly wasn't dying, and could probably manage, but without being able to move so quickly and having the pain on his mind, he doubted that he'd last the rest of the day before getting shot due to not paying attention.

"Nein." Ludwig told him, turning around and reaching for Edward's gun. "Come with me." Ludwig yanked Edward towards him by his automail arm and practically threw the younger over his shoulder. Ignoring Edward's screaming protests and kicking, he retreated in the direction they had come from towards the bunkers. It was dangerous, and Ludwig knew that he was now risking both Edward's life along with his own, but if he carried on leaving Edward to deal with himself, Edward would probably be killed, and he'd be too preoccupied to pay proper attention to his surroundings.

And Edward was a big brother too.

There was no time for bullet dodging, he knew. And truthfully, the people that they were fighting against were human beings just like them.

Would he shoot at someone rescuing their injured on the other side of the battlefield?

He didn't know. He hoped not.

Edward didn't really know what to think of the situation he was in, slung over the back of a higher ranking officer that he'd never shared more than one or two short conversations with. He assumed that this Ludwig was attempting to save him from becoming a danger to himself due to something like blood-loss, and though that was appreciated, they were now in the line of open fire. There was no way that this bloke could just keep running on and on without either of them getting hit-

Ludwig let out a muffled grunt.

There you go, thought Edward, looking down as far as his could from his position on the broad shoulder of his captor? Saviour? No, captor.

A bullet had just grazed his lower leg, whether the shot had been on purpose or not, Edward couldn't tell.

Why was Ludwig even putting himself out? He'd made it clear enough times in the man's company that he disagreed with the whole war and that he'd been forced to fight in it, and this man just seemed to plod onwards – he had such a forward attitude.

He was reminded vaguely of that infuriatingly poetic soldier back in Germany after Alfons' death. Maybe Ludwig didn't agree with what he was fighting for, just like him. Maybe he was doing it for another reason.

What that reason could possibly be he had yet to understand though.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Al,_

_You're in love with Emily! Right? I'm right._

_All the teasing aside, I'm kind of glad you found someone (whether she's a friend, or whether she _is _your girlfriend) who you have a connection with on this side of the Gate._

_Just don't end up like Alfons and I._

_You talking about Emily like that kind of makes me miss Winry. I don't think about her as much as I thought I would. It's hard to, since there's so much occupying my head. I only really get to think of my actual life when I'm writing to you, or reading your letters. _

_Speaking of war getting in the way of my life, don't take this too badly, or worry too much, but I suppose that you should know that I've been shot in the shoulder of my left arm. I am being well cared for, I'll have you assured. Don't worry too much, or I _will _stop telling you if anything bad happens. Understand?_

_I'm much happier with your new job! You're turning into me, just more polite and… taller… You have my coat, my hair and my job! I may as well just quit at life, I've been overtaken by my little brother, every big brother's worst nightmare and ultimate downfall! (I am just kidding, I'm obviously not going to do anything stupid. Not saying that you wouldn't know that but… Well, this is a letter, and sometimes things are misinterpreted… Never mind). Honestly though, you have no idea how proud I am, I feel like some kind of sappy parent._

_It's startling how different the army is here to how it is in Amestris. This is so separate from things. But then I suppose I wasn't in the army and in the middle of a war. I am so far away from normal life, just to be cast off somewhere. Maybe it's because I don't have a high rank like major, and I am basically just one of the pawns to be sacrificed for the ultimate motive._

_I wonder if they'll just send me away because I'm injured. Probably not, but there's a possibility, I suppose, though I was hurt worse in Amestris, and I wasn't given extended leave._

_Love,_

_Edward._

**I know that Punk didn't spring up in England until the late 60s – early 70s but I was writing this and realising how much of an anti-conformist punk Ed was, and I have slipped into the clutches of the Sex Pistols, punk, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten lately and suddenly became tempted to write an AU one-shot on the topic! So I am just leaving that in there to remind me!**

**Did anyone notice my sneaky foreshadowing in there? Ha ha! **

**Hello everybody! So, I got all my chapters planned out, everything works out, though some chapters seem quite long in the plan… This one is… Long.**

**I know that Punk didn't spring up in England until the late 60s – early 70s but I was writing this and realising how much of an anti-conformist punk Ed was, and I have slipped into the clutches of the Sex Pistols, punk, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten lately and suddenly became tempted to write an AU one-shot on the topic! So I am just leaving that in there to remind me!**

**Did anyone notice my sneaky foreshadowing in there? Ha ha! **

**Did Ludwig go down okay? I think I have 3 little subtle hints of things to come in there, did you find them? This is your Christmas present! I am in London for the next week and so I won't be writing for that period of time, though I will be able to get online. **

**Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope you're all good and review or else Father Christmas won't get you any presents!**

**~BS**


	6. Removed from Service

**Back from London! I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and Happy New Year to everybody!**

**Chapter Six: Removed from Service**

Ed sat on the hard ground, back at camp, where things were a little calmer, away from the front line and the gunshots. He hated to do this, he really hated it.

But he had to. This was Al. His little - brother and he'd shown how much he couldn't stop worrying for his own damn good. This was for his own good. The stupid boy. If he insisted on worrying about people like that all the time, he'd be killed when his back was turned as easy as pulling a trigger.

And so it was with a heavy heart, and a slightly shaking hand, that Edward wrote the last letter he ever would to Alphonse, and indeed, the last lie.

_Al._

_I've been removed from active service due to my injury. Something to do with recoil? Anyway, I'll still be away, but I've been at base running around like a mad idiot, I didn't realise how busy it all was. I've been made to make myself useful there helping out, now that I can move my arm more, though the bastard still hurts like fuck._

He sighed and looked up. This was proving hard to write, the words just weren't coming. He groaned and kneaded his forehead. Ludwig glanced over at him worriedly.

"Edward, are you okay?"

Stupid question. Edward wanted to scream. What a stupid fucking question. Ludwig knew _exactly_ where he was going, and he knew that he was hating it, and he knew that he was writing to his brother for what was probably the last time until they met again, because you couldn't send letters from _that place_.

It was half true, he assured himself. He wasn't _really _lying to Alphonse. He just wasn't giving the full story. And he _had _warned him, that if he spent a load of time worrying, he'd cut the information, though at the time it was just a threat. He hadn't meant to carry it out.

"Y-yeah. Just give me five minutes to write this letter, and then I'll be ready to go."

Ludwig turned away from the younger soldier to reply. It killed him to see Edward, and to know exactly how things were going to turn out against him again and again. Not like him at all. He'd had a choice in this war.

"Okay, I understand. But don't draw it out, Ed, we're waiting."

Well, Ludwig thought, he wasn't going to piss about. Edward was a man, not a little kid. He needed to know that there was a truck-full of soldiers, all with family they'd left behind, waiting for him to send this fucking letter.

_Anyway, I'll be quite busy in the next few weeks, so I'm not entirely sure how quickly I'll be able to get back to you. I'll enclose my new address. _

Oh hopefully, they'd forward the letters on like they said they would.

_Oh, and get a move on in leaving, the plans have gone through for the bombing for the border. Please move quickly, and send me your new address._

Edward was so stuck. The words just wouldn't come, but he needed them! He needed them for Al! Edward gritted his teeth and began to get angry with his pencil and paper, holding the pencil so hard he would have snapped it had he been using his right hand.

Oh fuck it.

_Al, I love you, and miss you. Things are getting so dangerous, and this is so close. Be so careful. It is so easy to kill a man, Al. You don't even need a gun. Humans are so fragile. I'm not there to hold your soul, so carry it gently, and don't go giving it to any old twat to hold._

_I think, for a while, this correspondence will be limited, if not cut off entirely. I feel as if this is the start or end of something. I certainly hope that if it is the end of something, it is the end of this war, and not anything more morbid._

_I'm sorry for being so… Un-Edward. I can't help it. _

_Please stay safe, Al. Please._

_~Edward_

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

"_We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,_

_We shall fight on the sea, and oceans,_

_We shall fight with growing strength and growing confidence in the air,_

_We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be._

_We shall fight on the beaches,_

_We shall fight on the landing grounds,_

_We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets._

_We shall fight in the hills;_

_We shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island, or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then out Empire, beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on to struggle until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of old."_

Al listened with half on ear to the speech Winston Churchill was giving over the wireless. As inspiring as it was, he was too excited.

Finally, all of those odd jobs, eating little and saving up his money had paid off.

All the tiny coins added up in the end, and sitting in front of him in neat towers was 2 shillings/6. A train fare to London.

This was a secret. His brother couldn't know he was planning to go to London, and no one in Newcastle could find out, because he imagined that Emily or Aiden would swiftly find out and stop him. But he had to do this. He owed these people.

_We will fight in the streets._

He re-counted his money back into his battered wallet and stood up, pausing for a moment to listen to some rambling at the end of the speech. Now was the time.

Except for church mass on Sundays, this would be the only time that everyone would be more or less in one place, and if some people weren't with the masses, they'd hear his news soon enough.

He stood up slowly, pulling his brother's coat from the post of his bed. He turned off the wireless and shut it in his small suitcase which was simply full of a few books, his letters from Edward, and his shirt and jumper.

He was dressing as Edward, today, he decided. It'd be a train journey just like old times. He picked up his reply to the letter he'd received from Edward just earlier today. He had it ready in the envelope, the new address written neatly on the front.

He opened it up and read it over one last time. There wasn't much to read.

_Ed_

_I understand, I promise to do just that. Please do the same._

_I love you._

_~Al_

There were so many words that couldn't be expressed on paper, or through word of mouth. What he needed was to hug Ed. Just the once would do him well for a few months.

He slipped the paper back inside the envelope and stuffed it in his pocket. He'd go to the post office on his way to Aiden's.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

The pub was too crowded, as soon as he opened the door, there were bodies against bodies, the smell of sweat, sea salt, work, coal dust and drink. He left his case by the door, he didn't want to have to drag it through the masses along with himself.

Churchill had finished talking and people were simply hanging around for a drink, in high spirits and the optimistic mood could be breathed in, it was so strong.

He didn't want to ruin this, be he knew that some things had to be done for the eventual end.

He was not going to leave and let these people die when he could have done something. He owed these people. A few in particular.

He finally made it to the bar and found Aiden pulling a pint of something or other, a glass in his own hand, his greying hair slick with sweat from the heat of the crowds, but a broad smile was spread across his face and there was a kind of unchecked joy about him.

Things were going to get better. This was going to turn around.

Of course, speeches as such made everyone who heard them optimistic, however, for the few who had experienced war before, speeches with such power behind were only given when things were terrible behind the scenes, in the trenches and the fields, there was defeat on the horizon.

Or in this case, the enemy was taking another tactic.

"Aiden? Excuse me?"

Aiden passed the drink over the bar and held his hand out for the man's money. He turned to look at Alphonse, his hand still out.

"Hallaw. Yeh missed the speech."

"I listened at Ian's. Sorry, I was writing to Edward." He explained, hoping he wasn't going to go off track. Seeking attention was not his thing. It would be much easier if Edward were there to do it. He was much better at attracting crowds.

He was dressed as Edward today.

"I diven't kner why yer apologising. What's the matter with yeh? Yeh need Em?"

Al took a moment to understand what he was saying. He'd been drinking, as his accent was stronger.

"No, sorry, I want to say… um… something important. To everyone. Here."

Aiden raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

Al wanted to disappear. Suddenly, it felt as if all of the pressure from the many people around him had disappeared and he was standing in some kind of spotlight.

"Yes. I'm sorry-"

"Stop apologising!" Aiden said loudly.

"I'm sorry!"

Aiden rolled his eyes. "Say what yeh want, lad. Want me teh turn the radio doon?"

Al nodded. "Yes, please."

Aiden disappeared around the corner to the radio while Al wondered how he was going to go about this.

The background noise lowered until is disappeared, and all that was left was the straight talk thrown from person to person over Al's head.

Aiden appeared behind him, leaning over the bar.

"Yeh'd better stand up 'ear on the bar t' be 'eard. 'else yeh'll jes be ignored."

"Um… Okay." Al clambered onto a bar stool and then up onto the bar. He felt like a twat. Well there was no turning back.

Aiden rang the 'last orders' bell at the end of the bar to get everyone's attention.

"How! Alphonse's get somefin the say the yeh all, seh yer all genna listen!"

There was silence. Al felt his hands start to shake. He felt as if he were confessing to something.

Slowly, he stood up straight, a good few heads above the tallest in the crowd.

"Um…" Al wrung his hands nervously behind him, suddenly very aware of his very red coat.

"I'm sorry for having to say something bad on a good day…" he started. God, everyone was staring at him.

"This is hard to say, but… Okay… I have to go, because Big Brother told me to move away from the port because…"

Al took a deep breath.

"Don't be angry at Brother, because it's not his fault. Brother is in the German Army-"

There was a general murmur which made Al want to cry in frustration.

"Hey!" he said sharply, scowling at the few people who had begun to whisper at this piece of information.

"It's not Brother's fault! He was made to be, the army did not have enough people – he's just bullet fodder to them, so don't you _dare_ talk between yourselves about him being a Nazi! Not all Germans are Nazis!" Al felt himself getting steadily more and more angry. Now he was up here, there were so many things he needed to say.

"A-anyway… Brother said that he read somewhere that the plans for the Port of Blyth to be bombed had gone through. In the same way that they are London. With the V-2's. Aliens. Doodlebugs. Yes?"

Someone cleared their throat.

"We know this. Don't you think we didn't guess that those Nazi fuckers would bomb the major import points to starve us into submission? Do you think we're stupid?"

Al scowled in the general direction on the faceless voice.

"I didn't say that I thought you were stupid! I'm sorry for the trouble but… I owe a lot to this town, this city, in fact, and there's not a lot I can give in an equal exchange."

Al furrowed his brow. That wasn't the right wording. It'd do.

"But I feel that if I know something important like this, I have the right to tell you. I have to right to confirm. Brother doesn't know the date, but he asked me to leave. I'd like to stay and help but…

I have to be selfish, just this once. I don't want to lose the person that matters most to me, just to die proud. I'll help where I can.

And I've come across people before, where in the face of danger, they have stayed in their homes and fought on the streets… rather than run away… and I know that is honourable.

I don't say for one moment that that is dishonourable, however;"

Al gritted his teeth. He should have planned this first.

"Please, for a moment, disregard religion.

Your lifetime on this Earth, given that you die of a natural death and have no underlying illnesses, can span anywhere from 65 to 80 years. That seems like a long time, especially to someone like me.

However, in the scope of things, we have short lives. Trees can live for thousands of years, though a butterfly only lives for a few short days. 80 years seems like a long way, especially at the start, but the further you get down the line, the less time that is. At forty, you only have halfway left to go. At sixty, things are getting shorter and shorter. You see how time runs away from you? A lot of people here are over thirty, nearly forty. Half of you have been working in mines since you were sixteen, maybe younger. Imagine a lifetime of hard labour to receive a minimum wage and a future of lung disease. What kind of payment is that?

A lot of you have children. Where do they stand in this? When you die, coughing up your lungs, they're left alone, wondering if they should go down the same route. For the sake of tradition and pride.

But who cares? Who looks at these people with pride? In 50 years' time, some people will look at a census record, or an employee list, and say 'those Geordies worked hard' and then move on with their lives.

What I'm saying is, if you can't be remembered forever, do what you want.

Do what you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone else.

Who wants to die early?

I'm not for a moment saying that this is the wrong thing to do. I know people myself, women and men, who'd happily die for someone else to reach their goal. That is what they want to do. But I don't think that anyone should have to spend the entirety of their lives to work for no reward, and no goal. I'm not accusing, I'm just throwing it out there.

And that is also why I think that before you accuse my brother of being a Nazi, at the moment, he'd being forced to do something he doesn't want to do, for a cause he doesn't like, and risking his life. It's not honourable. It's disgraceful that he has to do this.

And you're all free. So unless it's 100% what you want to do, don't die needlessly. Every life means something. And even if you feel that you don't have anyone, then truthfully, everyone here means something to me, and I'd hate to see anybody in this town die a needless death. Please, do everything in your power to either keep those you care for safe, or save yourselves.

I appreciate, that where I come from, things are done differently, and there is less community, and more 'everyman for himself.' But… if you want to ignore me, do so. I don't condemn that feeling of hometown glory but… Well I've never really had a home since I was small. And I want to do everything in my power to save a life."

Silence. Alphonse wanted to die.

Emily appeared from where she'd been listening in from the stairs and reached up to tug on Al's hand. He jumped and looked down to see her smiling ever so slightly.

"You did good." She said.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

**Al's speech means a lot, and I wanted it to carry that meaning, and so he is unrealistically articulate. I apologise.**

**Anyway, there were a good few references in there that are important. The first is that Al appears to share a point of view with Alfons in the sense that he wants to be remembered, but Al does look at things **_**slightly **_**differently.**

**The second is Maes and Hawkeye, and their willingness to die for Mustang to achieve his goal.**

**The third is Churchill.**

**The forth, is John Lydon or Johnny Rotten. There is an interview with him and Sid Vicious (I can't recall who said it, but I think it was Johnny) where one of them said something along the lines of 'do what you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone else. You're only here once.'**

**Al speaks pretty much how I feel here. I confess that I fear death, and not just my own, but that of the people around me. I do not believe in an afterlife, though it's not after death that I'm scared of. I spend a lot of time questioning my own mortality. I am born. I like to draw, write and I want to be a doctor. At any moment, I might die. I feel like a guinea pig, running in a cage. There will be a brief sadness at the end, and then the world carries on. I might even be replaced. The world isn't that large (not that I'm ungrateful) but I'm confined to it. There is more, but I can't reach it. And here I am, running in circles, pleasing the ideals that have been created by myself and those around me.**

**And so I believe, very personally, that while I am here and I do what I do, I shall do as I wish, and help as many people as possible do as they wish too, which is why I want to be a doctor. **

**The speech will be important at the last chapter.**

**I ran out my internet Skyping America. *facepalm* I can upload at school though, so no worries.**

**I had to call up my grandma, who moved to England from Jamaica after WWII to ask her about the train fare. She guessed at about 2 shillings 6 pence but she wasn't 100% because she wasn't around in the 30's – early 40's. Anyway, she was the best source I had. She also told me that immigration has done the world of good for England, and told me how ugly Londoners were after the war, with their traditional bad hygiene and lack of food due to the rationing. I found this hilarious. I'm the first of the last 3 grandkids on her side of the family to be officially English. Yippie! Unfortunately, of all the interesting accents of my heritage (Geordie and Jamaican) I have a really boring Standard English accent. Damn!**

**I know nothing much happens here. Please drop a line anyhow, I'd like to hear what you thought of the opinion I gave Alphonse.**

**I rambled in this AN a lot. Sorry.**

**~BS**


	7. In Pieces

**Chapter Seven: In Pieces**

"Alphonse."

Al stopped walking and turned full circle, looking hard into the night to find the voice that had called out to him. He'd only caught the briefest whisper before the cold sea-salted wind had whipped it away, but he was sure of who it was.

Emily walked out from the slim ally-way between two tall, red-brick buildings, wrapped up for the cold, her smile small, but honest.

"You're leaving?" she asked. Al nodded.

"The first train to Leeds leaves at six am, and then I'm changing train at Leeds to go to London."

"London is a dangerous place these days," she commented, but didn't object.

"The entirety of England is a dangerous place. As is Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And Germany, Italy and Austria. This is world war. Unless you want me to take train to Switzerland, you and I both will be always in danger, and even if we did that, if I were to travel to Switzerland, I would have to spend more times in England, earning the money to go there. It is not worth the time to worry about imminent death, so instead, I am going to make as many people as possible happy until I can indulge in the selfish want of my brother."

Emily smiled wider, and her eyes were no less honest. "I can't say a word without you pulling me apart."

"You wouldn't say the words if you did not want me to pull them apart."

"I suppose you're right." Emily stepped out of the shadows and into the full view of the night, stepping up so close to Alphonse that she had to crane her neck to look up at him. "Even if it is useless to worry about the death of one's self, or that of others, please, Alphonse, try not to die."

"I will make it my mission if you make it yours."

"I will."

"And if you hear of my death, you will know that I died trying to live."

"And you will know the same for me. That is all we can ask for in such a dangerous time."

Alphonse smiled a smile that was usually seen on the face of his brother. "You don't get anything unless you ask." He commented, his voice somewhat mischievous.

Emily stood on the tips of her toes and pressed her lips against Al's in what he could only describe as a kiss, but didn't want to label it as such.

"You get even more if you don't ask at all."

Alphonse didn't respond and just shared the moment, feeling completely at ease to let to cool sea air that smelt of salt and carried a constant stream of coal dust particles to wrap around him and tug at his hair while he guiltlessly thieved the body heat that Emily had offered him in the hug he was receiving, not wondering or questioning, just accepting short wonders like the way the cold forced itself to be felt, and how his eyes stung in the dry wind. The way the stars glistened like someone had pricked the endless skin of the sky with a pin and there were the finest droplets of blood waiting to fall, hanging on delicately in the sky.

He reached a conclusion that held a finality that was more peaceful than saddening and was infinitely privet and yet he felt the need to share it with every soul who'd ever walked the Earth.

How grateful he was. Even if a V2 were to drop on this spot and irradiate them both, if his brother were to die, or in the world were to implode and they all ceased to exist, he'd be left with the single resonating thought, as the part of his body that controlled thought began to shut down, that he got more than nothing, and all for nothing. Even though his life was cut short, he'd still lived. The worry of the meaning of life, and the future and the past and everything in between would all become irrelevant as he realised he'd been given these things to appreciate and the means to function in one way or another to appreciate them by something, or someone or some coincidence, and for that, he was infinitely grateful.

"Thank you." He whispered.

"What for?" Emily replied, he voice no louder than the wind.

"Everything."

They parted ways, Alphonse for London, and Emily, sent by her father to the safety of Hexham, and they left it at that.

~*~ Die Heiderich Theorie ~*~

Alphonse arrived in London in midday and disembarked to see sunlight shining unhindered from a blue – for the most part – cloudless sky. It felt like the first time he'd seen such a thing in weeks, months even, though that wasn't true. The Northern Skies were bleak, but the sun came dancing through every now and again in a mixture of constant smiles and occasional week-long summers. But for the most, the skies were dark and oppressing. London felt… freer. An aeroplane could break free of the skies, it felt, and you could travel the world.

Of course, that was something like the current problem.

Looking down from the skies, Al turned his attention to the people who milled around. Here was another English language that he would have to learn.

He comprehended farmer drawl, 'wey aye's and 'howay the lads'. He sat through the endless streams of incomprehensible babble to finally extract a meaning that he could have put across in a sentence.

This accent was different. More fast paced and aggressive, joking and guttural, no nonsense. He had to pay constant attention or he felt as if he was going to drown.

The city was fast paced as well. If he stood and dawdled for too long he found himself pushed over and shoved, much unlike the North, where life was much more relaxed and the people had much more time to stop and be polite.

London was for busy people.

Alphonse searched around all day, but all the inns and B&Bs that he stopped at were closed. He had a feeling he knew of the cause, but it still frustrated him a little. It was easy to get lost in London. It was a city for Londoners, not foreigners. He took a map of the London Underground, which seemed simple enough, but he was too scared to get on one of the trains lest it not be as easy as it looked and he somehow ended up going from King's Cross to London Bridge and no idea what to do with himself. He walked roundabout all day, stopping to ask for room and buying food as he went (if he wasn't going to get somewhere to stay, he might as well make a day of it) and ended up in Angel, Islington, in North London.

Every now and again, he'd see a smattering of collapsed houses and shops, the sides of them completely missing, exposing brickwork, bathrooms and sitting rooms, children's bedrooms and dining rooms. It was like some giant had come with a cake knife and cut a slice out of a neighbourhood, leaving only collapsing walls and crumbs behind.

The damage that was done was starting, and he'd have hated to have been peacefully eating dinner in one of those homes the first night that the sirens had gone off for real, thinking that a basement was going to protect you. Walls were not strong enough.

And all the houses were either joined in a terrace of uniform red brick, or standing close by eachother, so a good four or five houses could be seen to have been destroyed at a time.

Around the carnage, he was families collecting their belongings from the rubble, children climbing up the bricks scraping bare knees searching for lost teddies, while the shops and houses on either side remained stubbornly open, though business was slow, as most people were outside with brooms, trying to clear the bricks from the road, or with sandwiches and blankets to hand out to their neighbours, who now found themselves homeless.

The Germans had broken a lot so far, but Alphonse couldn't help noticing that people were genuinely just brushing it off and getting on. They'd broken a lot of brickwork, but not a lot of spirit. Which was an encouraging observation, however, they weren't finished yet.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

By the time half past eight at night was rolling by, the streets were starting to empty. As the city fell under darkness the citizens were disappearing somewhere underground and Alphonse stood in the middle of a deserted road in semi-darkness, still holding his case, wondering what to do with himself.

That was, until he saw a small boy that he recognised climbing by himself around the rubble of a half-standing shop, calling something into the night. Curious, Alphonse stepped closed, his footsteps echoing in the relative stillness.

"Terry? Terry? Terry?" he called again and again, rummaging around in the unstable rubble, looking a little desperate. Alphonse dropped his bags on the ground and stood by the part of the shop that was still standing.

"Excuse me?" he called softly, watching as the young boy turned to face his, his face tear streaked down the grime that had collected on his cheeks.

Fletcher Trinningham.

Al couldn't quite believe the similarities in this boy and his alter, and it made him wonder, just how like Alfons Heiderich was he?

"Wa's the ma'er?" he asked, peering down at Alphonse with wide, glistening blue eyes. "You lost summik?"

Al shook his head. "N-no. Pardon me, but I was just wondering why you were outside by yourself. Where are your parents? And who are you looking for?"

"You's not from London, is you?"

Alphonse frowned at the boy a little, half trying to figure out what he was saying (he only had a grasp of Proper English and a bit of Northern slang) and half wondering how this boy – who only looked about eight – had managed to turn the conversation onto him in less than a second.

"N-no. I came on the train from Newcastle. But I'm not English."

"You speak good English." The boy laughed a tiny bit. "Better than me prob'ly."

Al began to scale the mound of rubble until he was sitting next to the boy. He had thick, unruly hair that was ash-blonde, nearly brown, with blue eyes, a short body and thin and bony arms and legs with grazed knees and elbows. He looked in need of a good scrubbing and gave the impression that he didn't like his face being washed and spent most of his time playing in the streets in bare feet.

"Hmm. Where are your mum, dad, and brother?"

The boy narrowed his eyes and leaned over until his red nose was inches from Al's.

"How'd _you_ know I's got a big brother, huh?" he asked, his voice shrewd.

Al inwardly cursed himself at his stupidity, but simply shrugged. "I kind of had a feeling…?"

The boy huffed. "You did, did you? Humph." He crossed his stick-like arms and turned his face away from Alphonse in a way that was obviously meant to be disapproving, but on someone so young just looked comical.

"M'name's Oli and me brother's gone away in the army like me da'. 'E just wants me da' t' be proud of him like always. Me ma's off somewhere, I 'aven't seen 'er since yesterday. I've lost me dog."

"Terry?"

"Yeah."

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"My name is Al-"

An ear-splitting siren began to wail, cutting through the night like a sharpened blade, the tone of which made Alphonse ridged, not in fright, but in genuine fear.

They chose the perfect noise for the air-raid siren.

Oli stood up and began to trot down the pile of rubble that was his home, all the while looking up to the sky. As the seconds passed, the distant drone of Nazi planes became clear.

"Ge'down before you're blown to smitherines, Nor'verner!" he called. Al snapped out of his shock and ran after him.

"Where are we going?" he asked, breaking into a run as Oli quickened his pace.

"Underground," he said.

Oh right. How convenient that London was built on top of ready-made bomb shelters.

As they neared the tube station opening, Alphonse saw a swift moving line of people descending a set of stairs into a tunnel, above which was a wrought iron barrier that prevented people walking by from simply falling into the underground tunnel, over which was a red circle with a blue line through it on which read 'UNDERGROUND.'

"C'mon," Oli sighed, grabbing Al's arm and pulling him roughly into the surprisingly orderly line. Certainly, it was about four persons wide, but there was very little pushing and shoving. How could people be so calm?

Al walked swiftly down the stairs, becoming one of the crowd with Oli's hand still firmly holding his wrist.

Inside the Underground Station it was dark. The station platform was about 30 or 40 metres long, and about 8 metres wide until there was a sheer, 2 metre drop onto the tracks, which were black and decorated with the occasional rat which was blackened with dirt. When the platform ended, the tunnel continued on into a corridor of darkness that seemed to go on forever. Alphonse found it quite intimidating, it felt like anything could be lurking down there. Awful, creeping thoughts began to seep into his mind.

If the Nazis abandoned bombing from the skies, after noting that London was not breaking, and hiding in the subways, what if mustard gas, chlorine, was dropped down into the Underground? They'd be beaten at their own game, and once more, they'd all die, trapped, chocking on their own lungs.

Alphonse gagged. He did not, for one moment, want to imagine dying due to suffocation. It seemed too desperate and too uncontrollable and now he felt sick.

To distract himself from conjuring up anymore scenarios, he looked around at the people with whom he'd now be sharing the night.

The station was startlingly full, but considering how many people were probably crammed in, it wasn't as bad as Al'd been expecting.

Most of the people were from their late twenties to late thirties, since most people in their forties or over would own a house which probably had a basement, or a garden with an Anderson shelter, though there were a few old men and a good few children considering that most of them were supposed to have been evacuated to the countryside.

Alphonse noticed a few people in particular, a young woman who looked to be only in her late twenties, who was chubby, but hardly fat, with rosy cheeks and flyaway fair hair that was tied back in a hurried ponytail. In the sunshine, he imagined the sunlight would light her hair gold like wheat fields, and she'd be right at home in a bright kitchen making bread, however in the dark, slightly dank tunnel of the underground caught in a home front warzone, she just looked untidy, though there was still a certain air of hugs and smiles about her, which probably had something to do with the small baby who was giggling – not quite sensing the atmosphere – uncontrollably into her ample chest.

Another person who caught his attention was a young man who Alphonse was surprised to see. Why wasn't he at war?

The man seemed halfway between a panic and trying to make others stay calm. His blonde hair was sticking up in every directing from him constantly running his hand through it and his face was white with a rather unattractive sheen of sweat all over, but he looked so _in control_.

Oli jumped up from the crowds of people and grabbed at him again.

"Alphonse! Come on!" he was being dragged again. Oli pulled him hard through the crowds to the very end of the platform. The corner where the platform ended and the tunnel began was taken, but Oli pulled him to sit down next to the two young women who had taken that place.

"So we just wait here?" Alphonse asked, looking around the cramped space as much as the dim lighting would allow him to see.

"Yeh." Replied Oli, resting his head on Al's lap, quite happy just to sleep there.

Al observed the walls and the floors, every inch of the place where he'd probably spend the night, and a good few more. The walls were curved into a cylindrical tube (why they called it the 'Tube' he supposed) and tiled in an off-white colour with the same symbol he'd seen above the entrance, but reading 'Angel' instead of 'Underground,' tiled in every few metres across the walls.

At the very edge of the platform, there were two thick yellow lines running from one end of the platform to the other with MIND THE GAP written at several metre intervals.

He noticed a hundred other things, like the flickering lights, and that someone by the stairs had a loud cough. That baby was still laughing.

Oli yawned from his lap. "I hope Terry's okay," he muttered.

"I'm sure he's fine. Animals like dogs and horses have a good sense of danger, you know," Al mumbled absently.

Oli chuckled. "There's having a sense of danger and having somewhere to hide."

Alphonse didn't reply and just kept staring ahead. At some point, the chatter and periodic coughing must have turned to background noise, and then faded away completely, since he fell asleep, and dreamed of Alfons Heiderich making rockets like his brother had told him about in his letters.

There was a baby crying.

Al jumped awake just as the world seemed to come to an end. Everything shook and there was a deafening rumbling crash that sounded like the world caving in around him. Children's screams pierced through it, dogs barked and there was the deep rolling noise of buildings that had stood for hundreds of years crumbling to the ground.

Who had built these rockets?

After the first minute, things began to calm. Past the rumbling there was barely a chatter, only a reserved silence. The situation was so out of control it was distant and otherworldly. While the city fell to its knees, the citizens patiently waited for it to be over, so that everyone could just carry on as normal again.

It took hours for the deafening roar of the bombs dropping to pass by Islington, and through those hours, not a sound escaped Oli's lips, though the vice like grip that he maintained on Al's trouser leg the whole time said more than a thousand words.

Neither of them slept from that point on, even when the 'all clear' sounded. Al didn't close his eyes.

So, this was London.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

The morning came very early, probably because the night never ended. As soon as the first weak rays of sunlight began to struggle down the stairway leading into the subway at half six in the morning, people were up and gathering their things. Along with everyone else, Alphonse and his newfound companion Oli walked back into the world.

It was carnage.

Past the small fortress of sandbags that surrounded the subway entrance was what used to be a street full of small-time businesses and upstairs flats. True, a few had been missing some roof tiles, and a couple were missing a few important walls from the bombing that had happened the night before Al's arrival, but it could still be recognised as a street.

Everything was rubble. The Luftwaffe must have passed right over them that night, because the damage was breath-taking.

The road and the pavement had disappeared, everything was a carpet of red brick and dark roof tiles. Glass shards sparkled innocently in the wreckage.

What shocked Al was the extent. Everything was destroyed. It was everywhere, and had effected everything. Looking past the obvious destruction, through the weak rays of light, a constant film of dust and debris could be seen hanging in the air and within seconds of exposure, Al's throat felt like sandpaper.

Al didn't see what could be done to improve the damage, after all, it would just happen again and again for what seemed like an infinite future. Surely the city should wait until things had died down?

A small utter distracted him from his thoughts as one person broke the silence.

"My house…"

Oh, right. Now there was a subway station full of people who were homeless.

Seemed like he'd found, not only a bed, but an extended family for the time being then.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

And so the days stretched on and became a week and every day, the routine was the same. In the morning, everyone would evacuate the underground station and do all that could be done to salvage possessions from the rubble, call family and friends and acquire food from any shops still in business and standing on their foundations.

Oli helped a lot too. The shop that his mother had been running single-handedly after his father and brother had left to fight in the war could be described as nothing but a shop selling any useful or useless thing you could fit in a six by six metre space.

There were canned foods, dog biscuits, blankets, footballs and rugby balls. Mops and brooms, cards and pens.

Of course, now it was all buried under rubble, but they'd managed to make the most of it.

Oli seemed to realise without voicing a word about it that his mother was probably dead. She hadn't been seen for days, and it was obvious to Al when Oli had accepted her fate, when in the morning after the fifth bombing, Oli led him towards his shop, encouraging him to scavenge through the rubble for any salvageable produce.

They dragged out anything that looked useful, including some things that didn't really seem necessary (why did Oli want a tennis ball?) and carried them back down into the subway. Al then made a voyage into the next town with the young man he'd noticed on his first night in London to try to get a hold of some fresh foods like milk and bread – after all, someone was going to have to find some food for that baby, he was keeping them all up every night.

And speaking of keeping people up, Al learned a little more about his mystery man.

On the seventh day, someone broke the silence that fell between the bombings.

The wait between the shuddering crashes of the bombs was temperamental, which made it all the more terrifying. It could be a couple of minutes, or up to half an hour, but the unwritten rule in the Angel subway was silence between bombs dropping – as if they would miss anything.

One night though, the obvious sound of crying could be heard – not that it hadn't occurred before. There had been the sniffles of children, and the frightened screeches of the young baby, but through the entire night, this man screamed in agony, pushing himself in the corner against the walls, practically dying every time a V2 hit the earth.

Alphonse wondered whether it was actually paining him, the bombings, it went on for that long – though the theory made no sense. No one else was hurting.

Maybe he was just very sad about London being destroyed?

That was ridiculous as well; no one was _that _sympathetic with the ground above them. This man sounded like someone was ripping the heart out of him.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

At four in the morning of the eighth day, when the all clear sounded, Oli jumped up and ran above ground before the wailing had stopped ringing in their ears. It was unusual, since due to not getting any sleep, Oli slept during the early mornings. Ignoring Alphonse's pleas for an explaination, he carried on up the stairs and out of sight.

Al sighed. Oli reminded him of his older brother a little bit sometimes. So _impulsive_.

Alphonse followed the younger up the stairs to see him standing in the watery darkness holding something spherical.

"It is still really early, maybe you should sleep-?"

The object, which turned out to be a football, smacked him in the face and went thudding down the Underground stairs.

"Goal!" Oli shouted, grinning.

Al just stared at him, a little aghast. A few moments later, the screaming man from last night emerged from the subway holding the football with an accusing expression on his face. Al was about to apologise (that seemed to be his purpose in life, apologising for other people's mistakes) but Oli spoke over him, ignoring the clearly pissed off look on the man's face.

"Kick it back, then," he shouted, jumping from foot to foot trying to keep warm in the cold morning. Alphonse expected the man to deny and lecture the younger about causing a racket, but instead he placed the ball purposefully on the ground in front of him and looked at it as if he didn't know what it was.

Then, taking them all by surprise, he backed up a little and gave a huge running kick so that the ball smacked against the wall behind Oli so hard, that a few loose bricks on the top wobbled and fell to the ground.

"Goal." He said, and grinned.

Al wasn't one hundred percent sure how or why it happened (after all, there were more important things happening in the city) but within ten minutes, they had gathered together two teams and substitutes and a crowd from passers-by and people from the subway – everyone from skinny little stick-boys like Oli to hearty looking greying men who looked more likely to be pulling a plough in place of a horse.

People smiled and laughed from four in the morning to twelve, noon, and Alphonse felt so warm in having been part of that accomplishment. The man (whose name was Arthur, he'd learned) seemed to relish in it too, since he smiled more than Al had seen in the past week in six hours.

Maybe that was what he was here for. Making people smile. Making people happy. And his brother too. It made him feel purposeful, and gave him a goal and lit a light in the dark tunnel that was the future.

Al wondered if Ed had found a motivation in this war ridden new world.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Dear Brother,_

_I've moved from Northumberland, so don't worry about me. Also, Emily has been sent to her auntie's house in Hexham where she should be safe, which makes me feel a lot better._

_Brother, I've met so many special people – also, I met Fletcher Trinningham's alter, he introduced himself as Oli, but I assume his name is Oliver. Everyone's very serious around here, but not in a bad way. Nothing bothers anyone. Everyone just keeps moving as if nothing is happening, which reminds me of you a lot. _

_I miss you an awful lot, Brother. The people in England are (for the most part) lovely, but I couldn't ever replace you. I don't even think I'd like to meet your alter. Only you would do._

_I wonder what Alfons Heiderich would have to say about the bombs, do you know? I feel bad about him a lot. It's a pity that there was nothing more he could do to get his name remembered rather than dirty it with such a scheme. _

_Please, please, stay safe, Brother. I know there's no return address, I'm not staying anywhere specific right now, I'm just helping around, but that doesn't matter, right? Because this war will be over soon, and we can meet up again, and we can talk and talk and talk until the sun goes down and rises again. Even if we don't talk, I'd just be happy to touch and smell and see you. I've never missed someone so much in my life. Even Mum. _

_At least she's gone forever, not just out of reach._

_At least we've learned something from this though. We're the only people from Amestris, or even from our world, who know about this world, and these languages and their ways. I feel very special. Don't you? _

_I love you so much I could cry._

_~Alphonse._

**Al's letter made me so sad to write. Though that might be because I was listening to Ho Hey by the Lumineers while I was writing it which is very fitting. 'I belong with you, you belong with me…' *cries from feeling overload.***

**This chapter is SO long! *gasp* It's because I shortened the chapter beforehand, so there was a load of stuff I HAD to get in here. I cut a scene with Alphonse and Arthur, which was a pity, but it was just TOO LONG!**

**The football thing was from in WWI, if you didn't know, on Christmas day, German and British troops stopped fighting and played football, which I think is such a bizarrely wonderful image, two rivals playing football in a field of the dead. I couldn't quite get across the two rivals, but Al is kind of outcasted compared to the others, so sort of. I was looking for the same feel.**

**I think I'm going to tweak the ending just a little, to give Arthur more spotlight, and also, what I had in mind is too hard on Al, and I want to look at it more of a country on country perspective, and not person on person.**

**I don't have a title for the next chapter (le panic!).**

**I'm in the middle of my GCSEs and LOADS of tests, which is why it took AGES to write this. I should be doing chemistry revision as I type this… oh well.**

**See you next time!**

**~BS**


	8. Crumbling Down

**Chapter Eight: Crumbling Down**

"The little shit!" Edward muttered, scowling at the letter in his hands. He felt like he'd waited years for the letter in his hands, and through it made him want to cry, an anger was welling up in his stomach.

"Edward?" asked Ludwig, looking up from his own letter. There had been about twenty or so delivered to the camp a few days after they'd arrived.

"He's in fucking London," Edward mumbled, cold and angry tears springing to his eyes. What did he fucking care? He had no pride anymore. "Fucking London!" Edward didn't know whether he wanted to scream until his throat tore, or cry until he drowned.

Didn't Alphonse understand how precious he was? Didn't he understand that he was the only thing that Edward had left to cling onto? That in reality, there would only ever be one Alphonse Elric, and he was so easily breakable and he was _Edward's_. Why couldn't he just do as Edward asked and be selfish just this once?

The few men around him were either indifferent or didn't know what to do with him in one of his rages, and so just looked uncertainly at him, then turned away awkwardly, leaving Edward standing by the 10 foot chain wire fencing that surrounded the perimeter, fuming.

Could things get any worse?

Edward stopped himself before he started drowning in his own self-pity.

Yes, things certainly could be worse. He looked up and gazed around this desolate home away from home wearily.

He could be one of them.

For endless miles before him was dead land – nothing would grow here. Outside of the wire fence, grass and flowers grew, though wilting a little in the Autumn-turning-Winter – but inside, noting grew and nothing thrived.

Endlessly stretching as far as the eye could see were low, wooden huts set slightly into the ground, meaning that when it rained, the water pooled at the doorway and seeped into the wood, rotting it.

Further to the back of the plot, the shed-like structures stood, half built looking sad and wet, and beyond that stood two concrete chimneys.

The place was death. But if the place was death, Edward didn't know how to describe the people. They certainly weren't alive.

Men, women and children all merged into one and it became impossible to view anyone as an individual for Edward. Everyone was filthy, curled in on themselves and a heap of skin and bone. Edward couldn't even say that he felt sick, or disgusted, just nothing. His mind pulled up a blank every time he tried to analyse his own opinion on the situation. Often before in the past, when witnessing the suffering of others, his 'hero' instincts would often kick in and he'd be right there to save the day.

But in this place, he'd never felt weaker. If nothing else, he felt disgusted with himself. Not because he stood for this, because he didn't – or because this was his fault, because it wasn't. He wasn't deluding himself. Just being in the area disgusted him. He didn't feel human. He didn't even feel like an animal. Animals didn't treat each other like this.

He'd never felt so useless and mechanical – like a possession, only doing as he was told like a good toy soldier. He stood by the gates every day in his uniform and guarded the doors.

Watching the Nazis.

He wasn't a Nazi.

Thank God he wasn't a Nazi. If he couldn't take it to stand here and defend the land that was being threatened by the British and American troops, even if it meant being _near _this abomination called humanity, he'd take it.

At least he was on the outside.

Edward felt appalled at himself, but at this point, if he was truthful, he often spent more time pitying the Nazis inside the camp. He hated himself for it, but he just had no sympathy left for the Jews. Not that he _liked _their situation. He hated what was happening with every fibre of his being, but there was quite literally _nothing _he could do. He wasn't going to jump in and save them only to be shot in the head. He was _not_. Though he may have made many moves in Amestris which seemed selfless at the time, the underlying truth was that, there was always a little slither of personal gain in there somewhere. Even if it was just the gratification or the praise. Back there, he'd had something to strive for, a name, a goal and a purpose.

Here, he just had to stay alive. Edward wasn't going to lie to himself and make out that he was some kind of selfless person. He knew he wasn't, but he had no problem with that. He would stand here, day by day, waiting for the Americans or the British to stumble across this worker's camp, and when they did, he would not resist their forces.

But he was not going to take the path of a bullet for something unrelated to him.

There was only one person on any earth he'd take a bullet for. As much pity as he'd squeezed out of himself before he'd wrung himself dry and empty from frustration and tears for the Jews, he would not put himself in harm's way just to lose his life meaninglessly.

This war did not need one more meaningless death to add to the toll.

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

_Emily,_

_London is in a shamballs – like people warned me up North. It's such a pity to see all the rubble, someone spent ages laying those bricks which have housed hundreds of people for hundreds of years but what can be done in defence?_

_Though I've been seeing a lot of that spirit you were talking about. I think you might burst with pride if you had come with me, but never-the-less, I'm glad you're safe in Hexham. _

_I sent a letter to my brother. I didn't tell him that I was in London, but he'll probably figure it out. I don't want to make him mad, but I feel like I have to be here. I want to help. I want to be part of it all. This is all new to me, I can't just sit back and let everyone else handle it._

_That being said, there's more destruction going on that rebuilding. Most people are pretty much living in the subway now, the street is almost completely demolished. I have been able to help a little though, so for that I'm glad._

_I was also able to meet some lovely people._

_I don't want to sound weird, but I feel like I need to tell someone –_

_I'm so happy I could be in this world. I'm so happy I could cry – but I miss everyone so much that I probably will._

_Do try not to die because I love you very much._

_~Alphonse._

~*~Die Heiderich Theorie~*~

The shelter was in a thick silence that felt very touchable as everyone sat facing the wireless that Oliver had managed to salvage from the shop's rubble. It was a little battered looking, and the signal was a little terrible in the underground station, but the voice was understandable.

There was a BBC announcement interrupting the endless stream of songs that had been playing prior.

"– on the North East. The bombs fell instead on the nearby towns of Hexham, Choppington, Cramlington and Seaton Burn. Bombs also fell on Seaton Burn – however there were no casualties. Newcastle General hospital and Heaton Secondary school were also hit. There has of yet been one report of casualty."

"Oh, Al, please don' be sick," said Oli, eyeing Alphonse's shocked expression and pale complexion.

_She never wrote back. I thought she was busy, but she never wrote back._

"Alphonse, please stop staring," Oliver muttered, shaking the older boy's arm, a little worried. The news bulletin had long since ended, and yet Alphonse was still staring into space looking like he'd throw up at any moment. "Al, hey…"

_How long am I going to be waiting? _The realisation dawned slowly, the sun coming over the horizon casting bloody red and sombre orange over the skyline. _I'm just going to be waiting. And the longer I wait, there more are going to fall._

_How long will I wait until the last star falls and there is never another sunrise?_

_How long can this keep going until Edward falls?_

**I've not been very true to my universe with Edward in this chapter. Since this is Shamballa verse, Edward is much more of a 'hero' and much more selfless than he is in Brotherhood/the manga. But I much prefer manga Ed. I think he'd more of a realistic person. **

**I feel like I really need to explain myself when Edward states that he has no sympathy for the Jews, just in case it didn't come across the way I wanted it to and I made Edward sound like a dick, which wasn't what I wanted.**

**Nazi Germany is not Edward's problem at all. WWII is a major inconvenience to him, though not to be brushed off entirely. Of course, it has emotional impacts on him, it goes against his creeds and he's a very opinionated person, but I believe that when thrown into the grand scheme of things, Edward will most likely find himself helpless, as he does in the manga when he begins to realise that all of this is above him and everyone is a puppet. Luckily, there was something he could do about it. However here, he is very defenceless, and having been separated from Al, he is not willing to take any risks and lose his brother.**

**So yes, Edward felt empathy, sadness, hatred and anger towards to situation that the Jews found themselves in WWII, but what I was trying to put across (and I feel as if I wasn't successful) was that he no longer had the emotional strength to keep on caring that much when there was nothing he could do, especially on the guilty side. His hands were completely tied – so of course, he felt bad, but he also didn't feel obliged to step in, because it would be a fruitless endeavour, and that is what is wearing him down, his own uselessness (as we know from Nina) and generally Al ignoring him and being very, very selfless and mainly a 'little shit.'**

**I was cheeky with historical accuracy in this chapter. I lied here and there about areas which were bombed because I did it in the wrong year. Please forgive me? **

**My ending feels kind of lacklustre, but it was what I had envisioned from the beginning. I hope that when the last chapter comes, it does not disappoint. This turned a lot more melancholy than I initially expected…**

**Please, do review this time guys. (On the reviews, FF Net stole my circumflex thingy! Humph!)**

**(By the way, yes, I do know this chapter is really short. It has to end here, or else there will be no H chapter. And then we wouldn't spell HEIDERICH.)**

**~BS**


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